Books on Paris

 Yes, I got a bunch of Paris guide books out of the library but quickly came to the conclusion that I don't really care for guide books.  They are so boring because they never cover what I want to know or what I might like to see and they really don't provide a whole lot more than a description and an address.

So I took out some deeper books about Paris.  At the moment I am reading The Streets of Paris: A guide to the City of Light following in the footsteps of famous Parisians throughout history.  And I'm learning a lot of history I didn't know, so that's a really good thing, even if I can't remember what I read when I get to Paris.  Now I know that Henri IV was a Protestant from Navarre and that Louis IX was horrid if you were a Jew or Muslim, but a saint if you were the Catholic church.  I learned that Marie Curie was from Poland where she couldn't attend higher education and so came to Paris, that Simone Weil was a philosopher that I'd never heard of, and that Voltaire was probably a bastard.  The author of The Streets of Paris, Susan Cahill, also wrote Hidden Gardens of Paris which Juan is currently reading to find all the playgrounds for Louise.  Will the slides be too cold to slide down?

I've already completed The Only Street in Paris:  Life on the Rue des Martyrs, written by Elaine Sciolino, a former New York Times bureau chief in Paris.  That's also worth reading to give you a flavor of life in Paris and the individuals  who own the shops along this street that runs up to Montmartre.  You'll find out what happens when the fishmonger closes up shop, who's been running the transvestite club at the top of Rue des Martyrs for decades, who owns the bookshops and what a friperie is.  Each individual is unique with their own little quirks.  Naturally you also learn about whom the Rue des Martyres was named after, what Saint Denis carried up the hill (or was it down?), and where St. Ignatius de Loyola started his little band of Jesuits.  There's a story behind each location, something missing in typical guide books, which makes the book much more readable.

Coming up are two books by Eric Hazan:  The Invention of Paris:  A History in Footsteps; and A Walk Through Paris: A Radical Exploration.  Hopefully I'll get around to reading them and reviewing them!