Paris in July

For some reason over the past few months, I have been thinking about my trips to Paris.  I’ve also been seeing Paris images absolutely everywhere… on clothing, decorative trays, clocks, napkins, boxes.  So when I noticed that a couple of book bloggers were having a Paris in July blog party, I wanted to play along too! (See that post for the specific guidelines.)

They have been posting weekly Paris/French-related fun and reading the comments has been amazing too… seeing what everyone else has been reading and cooking and crafting.  I encourage you to check out this post for all the info about it.  I believe I’m the 80th participant.  WOWZERS!

For the challenge, I created a Paris-themed canvas just for fun, read two books, and gathered my Paris books for a photo.

I have been having some crafty fun over here… I included three actual photos from our Paris trips on the canvas.  Shakespeare and Company is my absolute favorite store in the entire world, so I had to include one of those from our 2007 trip.  And two from 2010: the building where we had our wine course and a pic of me sitting in Le Quartier Latin to check our guidebook for an address.  The rest of it is a collage of paint, tapes, buttons, stickers, and papers with some textured gel medium on top.

Since I read both to learn something new and to enjoy a little escape to a new place, the two books I read this month were right up my alley.  (Where does that expression even come from? I could say they were right on my nightstand and be more accurate.  Ahem.)

Paris in Love: A Memoir by Eloisa James is a lighthearted memoir about her year-long sabbatical in Paris with her family.  She was free to do whatever she liked and I enjoyed hearing about it all: her children’s experiences in school, her culinary adventures, her fashion observations.  It’s a quick read and quite touching at times.  I could definitely see some of her short observations being entertaining Facebook status updates.  I must say, I love reading travel narratives and this one does not disappoint.  It’s an excellent depiction of an American’s daily life in Paris, with lots of laugh-out-loud passages.

Dreaming in French: The Paris Years of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis by Alice Kaplan tells the stories of three American women who spent a year studying abroad in Paris.  I am amazed at how transformative their Paris year(s) were for these women and how different their experiences were.  Three different generations… a debutante, an intellectual and a political activist.  What strikes me is that for each of them, it was leaving home and experiencing a foreign city that helped mold them into the famous individuals they each became.

See all the other Paris in July posts here.