France Books

Streetwise Paris Map - Laminated City Center Street Map of Paris, France - Folding pocket size travel map with metro map including lines & stations

Streetwise Maps

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 70 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Very Useful Map Of Central Paris 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I generally like the "Streetwise" series of laminated maps, and their Paris map is no exception. It is compact, clear, easy to use, and exceptionally durable. It covers the city center of Paris, and the front side centers along the middle of the city with the Seine River running roughly along the midline. Northern and southern extremities, an index, and a Metro map are located on the back. All in all it is exceptionally useful for both planning a trip in conjunction with a guidebook as well as actually maneuvering on the ground in the city.

The most important landmarks are well defined on the map, and the information presented is accurate and current in my experience (it was revised in 2008). If you want to get out of central Paris you will need another map. Every map is designed for a specific purpose, and this one is designed for use by tourists of central Paris; for this purpose this map is exceedingly well suited, and I recommend it unequivocally.

Editorial Review:

Streetwise Paris Map - Laminated Center City Street Map of Paris, France - Folding pocket size travel map with integrated metro map including lines & stations

This map covers the following areas:
Main Paris Map 1:14,000
Paris Metro Map
Map of France

Rick Steves' Paris 2009 (Rick Steves)

Rick Steves, Steve Smith, Gene Openshaw

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Editorial Review:

The Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, and the cozy crêperies of Ile St. Louis—Rick Steves’ Paris 2009 allows any traveler to experience all that the City of Light has to offer, from the big-name attractions to the local favorites. Rick covers the best of Paris, providing full tours of the museums and historic sights, detailed walks through various neighborhoods, and complete coverage of Parisian cuisine. Pick from over 400 types of cheeses at the fromagerie on Rue Cler or take a day trip to Versailles—it’’s all possible with Rick Steves as your guide.

French Milk

Lucy Knisley

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Charming Paris Mother/Daughter Travelogue 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

The Glass Castle author Jeannette Walls once told me that memoir should be universal, and I've kept that in mind ever since when I read them. What I think she meant is that while a memoir is specific to the storyteller in the details, anyone should be able to relate to it, somehow. As I read Lucy Knisley's French Milk, I was struck by her storytelling, but also her age, use of photography, and that I could never write such a book, though I too have traveled to Paris with my mother.

The fact that her divorced parents are on good terms, a fact she casually drops in, resonated with me, especially when her father comes to join them for a brief visit during their six-week trip. This would never happen in my divorced family, and it made me, briefly, jealous--again, this goes back to Walls's maxim; my life circumstances may not be the same as Knisley's, but hers caused me to reflect on my own. She also exhibits a particular pride and faith in her work (with the occasional doubts), one that I still struggle with in my early thirties. Her dedication to her art and the creation of this book are apparent. Other moments are brief but powerful, such as going up the Eiffel Tower on a particularly windy day, where Knisley writes, "You could feel the tower move in the wind and see the birds blown off course."

I was torn as to the value of the photographs she included; at first, I thought there was something unfair about it, but then I came upon one of her kissing a wall and realized there was no other way to capture that moment, at least, not so thoroughly. The photos are used sparingly, without comment, filling in gaps in her story, fleshing them out and creating what feels more like an intimate scrapbook than a memoir, albeit an accessible one.

French Milk is a travelogue, and as such, sometimes the details of each meal become less interesting toward the end. But it's Knisley's personality, and little details that make this book so charming, whether it's the odd characters she meets or her feeling low on a particular day or railing against a piece of bad art, going so far as to name the artist, who's made a rendition of Paris Hilton, by name.

I finished the book a bit jealous of Knisley's closeness with her mother, and impressed that she managed to finesse both the details and the bigger picture, a portrait of a young woman just starting out in "the real world," but taking a detour to a city full of pastries, lush dinners, cemeteries, art and adventure before she does so. French Milk will appeal to Americans who've, like Knisley, fallen for Paris, and those looking to recapture their college traveling days. As for me, I'm giving a copy to my mom, and hope that our travels are as fruitful.

Editorial Review:

Through delightful drawings, photographs, and musings, twenty-three-year-old Lucy Knisley documents a six-week trip she and her mother took to Paris when each was facing a milestone birthday. With a quirky flat in the fifth arrondissement as their home base, they set out to explore all the city has to offer, watching fireworks over the Eiffel Tower on New Year's Eve, visiting Oscar Wilde's grave, loafing at cafés, and, of course, drinking delicious French milk. What results is not only a sweet and savory journey through the City of Light but a moving, personal look at a mother-daughter relationship.

Immoveable Feast: A Paris Christmas (P.S.)

John Baxter

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Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Gastronomy -> Essays

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

A witty cultural and culinary education, Immoveable Feast is the charming, funny, and improbable tale of how a man who was raised on white bread—and didn't speak a word of French—unexpectedly ended up with the sacred duty of preparing the annual Christmas dinner for a venerable Parisian family.

Ernest Hemingway called Paris "a moveable feast"—a city ready to embrace you at any time in life. For Los Angeles-based film critic John Baxter, that moment came when he fell in love with a French woman and impulsively moved to Paris to marry her. As a test of his love, his skeptical in-laws charged him with cooking the next Christmas banquet—for eighteen people in their ancestral country home. Baxter's memoir of his yearlong quest takes readers along his misadventures and delicious triumphs as he visits the farthest corners of France in search of the country's best recipes and ingredients. Irresistible and fascinating, Immoveable Feast is a warmhearted tale of good food, romance, family, and the Christmas spirit, Parisian style.

French Country Diary 2009 (Desk Diaries)

Linda Dannenberg

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

French Country Diary - Calendar 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

I absolutely love this beautiful, well-designed calendar. Also, Amazon does a great job!

Lovely gift 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I've been giving the French Country Diary to my mother (now my mother-in-law) every year for at least the last 15 years! They both love it for their weekly planners. This is a beautiful hard-bound book with magnificent photographs of the countryside.

Editorial Review:

Give the gift of France (even if to yourself). The French Country Diary is an elegant datebook that transports Francophiles to the French countryside to the rustic kitchens of Provençal farmhouses and charming boutiques filled with treasures. Through narrow village streets, the private gardens of grand châteaux, and colorful farmers markets that look like paintings. Size Closed: 8.25" w x 8.25" h. Size Opened: 16.5" w x 8.25" h.

Quiet Corners of Paris

Jean-Christophe Napias

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Paris of my dreams 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

A charming book that will lead you to places known to seasoned and local Parisians. Not the run of the mill tourist spots. You will become part of "secret Paris".

Dull 3 out of 5 stars.
0 of 7 people found this review helpful.

To say that this is a little dull is an understatement . the quiet corners are DEAD .

Just my style 3 out of 5 stars.
0 of 2 people found this review helpful.

These are the kind of experiences I seek on every vacation. But I only have a week in Paris so thank you so much for doing the "leg work" for me.

Editorial Review:

More than eighty of the loveliest, most tranquil, and sometimes hidden places in Paris are celebrated in this charming guidebook

Quiet Corners of Paris is a beautifully illustrated peek into eighty-one often overlooked, always beautiful, locales: hidden villas, winding lanes, little-known 19th-century passages, serene gardens, and cobblestone courtyards. Some of the places have breathtaking views, others are filled with historic and architectural details, from stone archways, garden follies, boxwood mazes, ornamental statuary, stained glass, and Renaissance fountains. Follow a stone path under a trellis of blossoms or wander through a gate to discoverÉ

Paris (EYEWITNESS TRAVEL GUIDE)

DK Publishing

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 53 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

This guidebook made making our way around Paris a piece of cake 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 0 people found this review helpful.

We have just returned from Spring Break in Paris and the "Paris: Eyewitness Travel Guide" was our guidebook for our trip. Of course, the photo illustrations in any DK book are always impressive, and since I always like to see where I am going and what is to see there without having to Google everything, that was an obvious plus with this book. I must admit that II do not really think about this particular book as a guidebook for getting in-depth information about places; when I want that sort of information I get a guidebook at the place (only thing I bought on the trip were guidebooks and postcards). In practical terms this guidebook functioned as our menu for the trip, allowing us to see what was available and when you could visit, which was crucial because visiting hours change based on the month and the day (my biggest piece of advice based on this trip is that if you can go see the Louvre and the Musee d'Orsay at night--Wednesday and Thursday respectively--you will enjoy them a lot more without the massive crowds during the day).

For me the best part of this guide book ended up being the maps. Paris is gridded out in 18 maps in the back of the book and for each region of the city there is a general map of the entire area with "Sights at a Glance" marked along with metro and train stations. Add to the mix the Paris Metro and Regional Express Railway (RER) map inside the back cover, and we found it incredibly easy to find things. We got a 5-day Metro pass and had the fortune of our hotel being right down the street from the Montparnasse Bienvenile station, which was the intersection of several metro lines (plus linked to a train station which allowed us to go to Chartres and be back by 1 in the afternoon). Except for a bus tour/river cruise the first night and a side trip to Versailles, we did not have our trip planned out. We had a list of things we wanted to see and each day would pick a starting point and work out our other options as we went along. These maps were great for making that relatively easy. Nor did we feel that we were restricted to the restaurants in our area because we were able to use our maps to head off into the night and find them.

The only exception would be the maps of the Cimetiere du Pere Lachaise and Cimetiere du Montparnassem because they were not extremely helpful in trying to find several of the graves I was trying to track down. Those of Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison are easy to find because there are also several people standing around them, but finding those of Moliere, Sarah Bernhardt, and Samuel Becket were much harder. The guide does provide tiny icons representing what the graves actually look like, but the locations can be troublesome, especially when the graves are not right on a walkway. But there are detailed maps for Pere Lachaise and signs at the entrances that you can photograph with your digital camera and reference as you walk about (courtesy of your magic zoom button).

I bought the book a year before our trip, when my impromptu suggestion that we go to Paris for Spring Break was derailed by the lack of a current passport. So there is a minor concern that information is not totally current. On the one hand the Musee de l'Orange with Monet's water lily series was open, but the one place my wife wanted to go, the restaurant atop La Samaritaine, was derailed because the department store was closed. As long as you suspect that these sort of things are always going to happen (I felt sorry for the law students visiting the Louvre to discover that the Code of Hammurabi was not on display), you should be able to roll with these punches. Final word of advice regarding this particular guidebook: Make sure that you have a purse or a coat with pockets large enough to accommodate the peculiar not quite "pocket" size of this guide.

Editorial Review:

The Eyewitness Travel Guide helps you to get the most out of your trip with minimum difficulties. The opening section Introducing Paris locates the city geographically, sets modern Parisian its historical context and explains how Parisian life changes through the years. Paris At a Glance is an overview of the city's specialties. The main sightseeing section of the book is Paris Area by Area. It describes all the main sights with maps, photographs and detailed illustrations. Get to know Paris with The Eyewitness Travel Guide.

Hungry for Paris: The Ultimate Guide to the City's 102 Best Restaurants

Alexander Lobrano

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

WHEN IN PARIS. . . .

If you’re passionate about eating well during your next trip to Paris, you couldn’t ask for a better travel companion than Alexander Lobrano’s charming, friendly, and authoritative Hungry for Paris, the first new comprehensive guide in many years to the city’s restaurant scene. Lobrano, Gourmet magazine’s European correspondent, has written for almost every major food and travel magazine since he became an American in Paris in 1986. Here he shares his personal selection of the city’s 102 best restaurants, each of which is portrayed in savvy, fun, lively descriptions that are not only indispensable for finding a superb meal but a pleasure to read.

Lobrano reveals the hottest young chefs, the coziest bistros, the best buys–including those haute cuisine restaurants that are really worth the money–and the secret places Parisians love most, together with information on the most delicious dishes, ambience, clientele, and history of each restaurant. A series of delightful essays cover various aspects of dining in Paris, including “Table for One” (how to eat alone), “The Four Seasons” (the best of seasonal eating in Paris), and “Eating the Unspeakable” (learning to eat what you don’t think you like). All restaurants are keyed to helpful maps, and the book is seasoned with beautiful photographs by Life magazine photographer Bob Peterson that will only help whet your appetite for tasting Paris.

Praise for Hungry for Paris:
"Every time I go to Paris I call Alec and ask him where to eat. Nobody else has such an intimate knowledge of what is going on in the Paris food world right this minute, and there is nobody I trust more to tell me all the latest news. Happily, Alec has written it all down in this wonderful book and now I can stop bothering him." –Ruth Reichl

"Hungry for Paris is a brilliant book with an almost fatal flaw: the writing is so enchanting you may never leave home to go to any of Alec’s favorite places. Few people know,love and appreciate Paris restaurants the way Alec does; no one writes about them better or with more charm." --Dorie Greenspan, author of Baking From My Home to Yours

“When I was nineteen, I went to France to study, but instead, I just ate. The experience changed me: I came back to the United States, and a few years later, started Chez Panisse. In Hungry for Paris, Alec Lobrano describes his own gastronomic awakening, probably better than I could! This book is a wonderful guide to eating in Paris.”
–Alice Waters

“I dearly hope Monsieur Lobrano has an unlisted phone number, for his book will make readers more than merely hungry for the culinary riches of his adopted city; it will make them ravenous for a dining companion with his particular warmth, wry charm, and refreshingly pure joie de vivre. Lobrano is a sly raconteur, a respectful critic, and the very best kind of insider--one who genuinely longs to share all his best discoveries.”
–Julia Glass, author of The Whole World Over and Three Junes

“Organized by neighborhood and interspersed with delightful sections on such matters as eating alone. . . . This is the sort of guide you read before you go to Paris… Lobrano tells you what to expect and how to act.”-Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Lobrano . . . fleshes out his luscious prose with tempting photos. Hungry for Paris is like a cozy bistro on a chilly day: It makes you feel welcome.”
-Washington Post Book World

“Le Grand Vfour. Maxim's. La Table de Jol Robuchon. None of these venerated restaurants are on Lobrano's list of the 102 best in Paris. And that's one of the reasons I love Hungry for Paris.”-Gridskipper

“A treasure trove of 102 mostly undiscovered addresses… Small and innovative bistros get the lion's share of Lobrano's ink, interspersed with chapters that are autobiographical, informative and entertaining.”-Women’s Wear Daily

“Lobrano is an ideal guide because he remembers who he was, how he became the expert he is now, and how you can acquire expertise. And he can do that hard thing --- see what's in front of him.”- HeadButler.com

A Year in Provence

Peter Mayle

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 132 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Who hasn't dreamed, on a mundane Monday or frowzy Friday, of chucking it all in and packing off to the south of France? Provençal cookbooks and guidebooks entice with provocatively fresh salads and azure skies, but is it really all Côtes-du-Rhône and fleur-de-lis? Author Peter Mayle answers that question with wit, warmth, and wicked candor in A Year in Provence, the chronicle of his own foray into Provençal domesticity.

Beginning, appropriately enough, on New Year's Day with a divine luncheon in a quaint restaurant, Mayle sets the scene and pits his British sensibilities against it. "We had talked about it during the long gray winters and the damp green summers," he writes, "looked with an addict's longing at photographs of village markets and vineyards, dreamed of being woken up by the sun slanting through the bedroom window." He describes in loving detail the charming, 200-year-old farmhouse at the base of the Lubéron Mountains, its thick stone walls and well-tended vines, its wine cave and wells, its shade trees and swimming pool--its lack of central heating. Indeed, not 10 pages into the book, reality comes crashing into conflict with the idyll when the Mistral, that frigid wind that ravages the Rhône valley in winter, cracks the pipes, rips tiles from the roof, and tears a window from its hinges. And that's just January.

In prose that skips along lightly, Mayle records the highlights of each month, from the aberration of snow in February and the algae-filled swimming pool of March through the tourist invasions and unpredictable renovations of the summer months to a quiet Christmas alone. Throughout the book, he paints colorful portraits of his neighbors, the Provençaux grocers and butchers and farmers who amuse, confuse, and befuddle him at every turn. A Year in Provence is part memoir, part homeowner's manual, part travelogue, and all charming fun. --L.A. Smith

Rick Steves' France 2008 (Rick Steves)

Rick Steves, Steve Smith

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Thanks Steve. We had a blast. 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

Having used many guidebooks, I think these are the best. Granted, the Rick Steves books are unique in that they are selective in the areas that they describe, but these areas are described well. With his guides, you feel like Rick is on the trip as your personal tour guide. Most guides (Frommers, Foders, etc.) give you a superficial overview of the whole country. Rick lets it all hang out. He tells what he thinks is a worthwhile stop and what isn't. Most of what "isn't" doesn't make it into the guidebook at all. Thus, I suggest taking another more comprehensive book (Lonely Plantet, Rough Guide, etc.) to fill in any gaps should you find yourself in a location Rick doesn't describe. On the whole though, I love his itineraries. Most people traveling to Europe have limited time (1 month or less). There's only so much you can see; why not have someone boil it down and provide a straight forward opinion as to what to see and do? In his books there is easily enough to keep you busy for two months. The real question is whether you are the type of traveler that would like Rick's suggestions. Here is a test. If you can answer "yes" to most of these questions, buy the book, you'll love it. 1)Are you a value seeker? 2)Do you want to venture off the tourist trail? 3)Are you an adventurer? 4)Do you appreciate tidbits on history and art 5)Do you have the stamina to tour a new town/city every 1-3 days? 6)Do you try to avoid tourist traps like the plague? 7)Is your idea of fine lodging simple, homey places in good locations, with moderate prices? I would not suggest this book for people who want to spend their vacation walled up in a luxury hotel, venturing out only to shop and tour the biggest of sights.

Editorial Review:

Rick Steves doesn't just list where to travel in Europe — he leads travelers through the "back door" and reveals how to give every journey an extra, more authentic dimension. He shows travelers how to delve into European culture, make friends with the locals, and experience each region's natural wonders — economically and hassle free. Rick Steves' France 2008 is no exception, covering Paris, Provence, and the French Riviera. Completely revised and updated, this guide includes opinionated coverage of both famous and lesser-known sights, friendly places to eat and sleep, suggested day plans, walking tours and trip itineraries, and clear instructions for smooth travel anywhere by car, train, or foot. America’s number one authority on travel to Europe, Steves' time-tested recommendations for safe and enjoyable travel in Europe have been used by millions of Americans in search of their own unique European travel experience.