Napoleon

Roberts, Andrew. Napoleon: a life. New York, New York : Viking, 2014.

Man on a train

Just saw on shelf, took out, didn't watch,

France discovered

Stuart, Julia. (2008). The matchmaker of Perigord.New York: Harper.



Kirkus: First-time novelist Stuart would have benefited from more editing, but she does manage to richly evoke the fecund sights and smells of rural France. A slightly verbose, yet still delightful, excursion to a kinder, gentler place.

A novel bookstore

Cossé, Laurence. (2010). A novel bookstore (translated from the French by Alison Anderson). NY : Europa Editions.

Looking through NEW books to select those that should be made 28-day books, I found this one; its cover reminded me of Elegance of the Hedgehog (which I left as NEW, out of sentiment).

Kirkus: The book's real strength is its romances—of both the bookish and human varieties. In attention to matters of the heart the story is redeemed, delivering a touché where its original thrust misses the mark. A literary idyll preselected for bookworms and bibliophiles.

Booklist Reviews: Wry, sly, and coyly seditious, Cossé's piquant satire is a subtly wrought manifesto against blatant consumer manipulation and media malfeasance.

Sarah's Key

Holocaust fiction set in France.

How to eat a small country

Founding foodies

DeWitt, Dave. (2010). The founding foodies: how Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin revolutionized American cuisine. Naperville: Sourcebooks.

The Chinaman

Book of the day on Book-a-Day calendar.


Friedrich Glauser (February 4, 1896 in Vienna – December 8, 1938 in Nervi) was a German-language Swiss writer. He was a morphine and opium addict for most of his life. In his first novel Gourrama, written between 1928 and 1930, he treated his own experiences at the French Foreign Legion. The evening before his wedding day, he suffered a stroke caused by cerebral infarction, and died two days later. One of Germany's best-known crime writing awards is the Glauser prize.

Elegance of the hedgehog

I'm reading it now (20 January). Book of the day on Book-a-Day calendar.

2 Parisians, a concierge in a building where wealthy people live, and the 13-year-old daughter of one of those familes, both snarter than they let one, each for her own reasons, are the main characters.