BOOKPATHS

San Francisco (and, of course, Paris)

There are a number of excellent exhibitions at Northern California museums currently, including The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories at the Contemporary Jewish Museum. You can easily visit one museum in the morning, stop for lunch, and then walk a couple of blocks to the other museum in the afternoon. While the SFMOMA exhibition is broader in scope, focusing not only on Gertrude Stein, but on her brothers and fellow collectors, Leo and Michael, along with the artists they championed during “the birth of modern art;” the Contemporary Jewish Museum focuses primarily on Gertrude Stein, following her “life from the end of World War I through World War II,“ “illuminating her pivotal role in art during the 20th century.” By day’s end, you’ll feel both exhilarated by the masterpieces you’ve seen and awed by the foresight, intelligence, and creativity of the Stein family. These are exhibitions you’ll carry with you.

Whether you are able to attend the exhibitions or not, both catalogs are well worth their hefty prices.

Paris, France

Writer Penelope Rowlands chose "three Bastille Day reads," books that pull readers into the "bloody" July 13, 1793, "uprising."

While the following three books are based on research into this bloody uprising, they're also feel-good volumes, in a way. For each one will vividly remind you how lucky you are to be alive and reading — and with your head still attached.

Rochefort, France

Elaine Scolino visits the home where Pierre Loti, "novelist, naval officer, scuba diver, world traveler journal writer, art collector, amateur bodybuilder, and acrobat, "was born and lived on and off for most of his life."

On an unremarkable street in the unremarkable town, the Loti house museum — two attached bourgeois houses, really — is an alternate world where wildly divergent cultures and epochs are thrown together. Loti was an eccentric of his era, and would be considered eccentric even today. He collected sperm whale teeth, Senegalese bracelets, Egyptian cat mummies, Japanese mobiles, and even bought the house next door for his overflow of objects. He posed nude except for a small genital covering to disprove rumors that his sculptured, small-waisted body was corseted. His house is the gateway to this world, with rooms that unfold as if each were a layer of his personality.

Abbey of St. Wandrille de Fontanelle, Normandy, France

Writer Adam Haslett explains why we "must read" A Time to Keep Silence, by Patrick Lee Fermor.

But after a few days amidst the silent rituals of the monastery, his mood changes.  'There are no automatic drains, such as conversation at meals, small talk, catching trains, or the hundred anxious trivialities that poison everyday life.'  Soon, 'dreamless nights came to an end with no harder shock than that of a boat's keep grounding on a lake shore.'

Paris and Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye, France

Susan Spano follows in the footsteps of Colette.

Her ghost still haunts the quiet northern arcade of the Palais-Royal. Only now there's a plaque to identify her: Colette, the extraordinary French writer who spent her last years at the edge of this garden. It doesn't list dates; vain to the last, she wouldn't have liked that. When she died at age 81 in 1954, she received a state funeral in the palace's cour d'honneur. Her coffin, surrounded by wreaths, lay under a French tricolor, and thousands came to pay their respects. – from “Colette’s Paris,” by Susan Spano, The Los Angeles Times

Shakespeare and Company, Paris, France

Jeanette Winterson considers the legacy of Sylvia Beach.

The best news is that a bookstore that helped to shape the 20th-century world of ideas and exchange has moved vigorously into the 21st century, communicating to a new generation the vitality of the book — as Sylvia said of it, her ‘missionary endeavour’. – from “Sylvia Beach: Her Pioneering Spirit Lives On,” by Jeanette Winterson, The Times

France

Danielle Trussoni offers “three books for the closeted Francophile” on NPR’s All Things Considered.

France

Novelist Rose Tremain “reflects on the past and her present life writing in the south of France.”

Truth has proved kinder than fiction in that the locals, unlike the elements, have not conspired against the incomers. Their vine-growing neighbours ‘have been very welcoming to us, right from the day that we appeared. Richard has given English lessons to their grandchildren, and they come and swim in our pool. We have no bad experiences of ostracism or dislike in the village.’ And, unlike her blundering characters, ‘We haven't trespassed on anyone else's light or space. Two things have helped us: the fact that we're writers, which is seen as a slightly alien but honourable species by the French. And the fact that we can both speak the language well.’ They also (prospective purchasers take note) hire local artisans for all the renovation work. – from “Journeys Home: Rose Tremain Reflects on the Past and Her Present Life Writing in the South of France,” by Boyd Tonkin, The Independent

Paris, France

Where can you find English-Language bookstores in Paris?

Generations of English-speaking literary expats in Paris have left a legacy of bookstores on both sides of the Seine. Many Anglophone readers swear by the much beloved Shakespeare and Company, or the Paris branch of the British chain W.H. Smith. But for those willing to hunt, there are several gems to discover: small, well-maintained stores crammed with new and used English-language titles — and plenty of character. – from “Reading English-Language Books in Paris,” by Rebecca Appel, The New York Times

Provence, France

John Crace catches up with Peter Mayle, two decades after the author’s move to France.

If Mayle had had his way, the description of A Year in Provence as fiction would have been spot on. ‘When we first moved to France [in 1987] I had the intention of writing a novel and had shared this great ambition with my agent, Abner Stein,’ says Mayle. ‘But there was a problem: I found myself completely distracted – much more taken up with the curiosities of life in Provence than with getting down to work on the novel. The daily dose of education I was receiving at the hands of the plumber, the farmer next door, the mushroom hunter and the lady with the frustrated donkey was infinitely more fascinating than anything I could invent.’ – from “A Year in Provence, 20 Years On,” by John Crace, The Guardian