Books I have read…

 I better start keeping track of the books about Provence I have read or I’ll start rereading them by mistake.  

Because I’d like to visit Marseille, I’ve been reading the Marseille Trilogy by Jean-Claude Izzo.  Now this isn’t the classic Marseille Trilogy by Marcel Pagnol.  It’s a gritty set of mysteries featuring a cop and then ex-cop, Fabio Montale, who drinks and smokes too much.  Like many Marsellais, Montale comes from an immigrant Italian family and grew up with immigrants from Spain and Algeria.  

Marseille has always been a major port on the Mediterranean with a very diverse population.  In the three books, Total Chaos, Chourmo, and Solea, Izzo delves into the problems of 1990s Marseille and talks about its various neighborhoods (one of the characters even attends the university in Aix-en-Provence).  

 Montale at the time of the Trilogy, lives down the coast from central Marseille in Les Goudes, a coastal village.  Eating, especially fish, is very important for him, and that’s lucky for me!  This is a great book for learning about Marseille, its population, its problems, and what they eat.  To learn more about Marseille, see the Guadian’s 2021 article Marseille: a virtual tour through books, film, food and music.

I also checked out a couple of books from the Library by Georgeanne Brennan, who spent the 1970s in Provence pretty much as a hippy:  raising goats and making cheese.  She has returned to Provence pretty much every summer since then, alternating between that and Winters, Northern California.  The first one, Discover Provence:  A Shopping, Wine, Antiques, and Festivals Guide to the South of France, is a very quick read and nice introduction to the area, without listing a lot of specific stores or festivals.  It’s a general outline of the region.

The second book by Brennan, My Culinary Journey:  Food and Fetes of Provence with recipes, contains the narrative of a previous book, A Pig in Provence, to which Brennan has added photos (with very little relation to the text) and recipes.  Unfortunately our library system doesn’t have the older book.  Both recount her life living in Provence as a goat raiser/cheese maker in the 1970s along with her husband and young daughter.  One gets the impression that things have really changed since then:  fewer farmers now and more tourists.

One Year until Provence!

In exactly one year we will leave for our 6 weeks in Aix-en-Provence.  I’m already ready, except for the French… but we have been studying diligently, listening to YouTube videos.  Even Fernando, who is getting tips from a polyglot on how best to become fluent in a language.  He also has some favorite French language instructors on Easy French.  They are both très charmante.

I have a couple of YouTube French instructors myself.  Both of them speak slowly and clearly so they are easier to understand than Julie Andrieu.  Français Authentique offers language learning but also talks about French politics, geography and culture.

Guillaume Posé - Professeur de français concentrates more on the language and speaks extremely clearly.  He is also très charmant.

I’m sure there are many more YouTube French instructors out there but these are some of my favorites.

Naturally I spend even more time checking out places to go and food to eat in Provence and the Côte d’Azure.  Recently I ran across this older Turkish/American couple who are living in Nice:  HappyGoLuckyTravel.

And, of course, they were suggested by YouTube after I started watching these videos on Nice by two German women: RivieraGo!  I especially liked their video on the hypermarché because I remember the Carrefour near our hotel in Toulon in 1999.  Such a selection of French cheeses!

My problem with YouTube, of course, is I subscribe to so many channels that it has become hard to find what I’m looking for and I have trouble remembering their names, which they always try to make unique and catchy and so even harder to remember!