Paris in Love: A Memoir

I guess I was looking for a "How to" book on how to move to Paris (in my dreams) but this is anecdotes about life in Paris without any "nuts and bolts" information but I still enjoyed it.

A collection of vignettes from Eloisa James' sabbatical year in Paris. Delicious recipes, a delightfully precocious daughter, and an adorable prosciutto-addicted overweight chihuahua. Lovely descriptions of the city, the people, and the culture, as well as some moving thoughts on surviving cancer and coping with an aging parent.

Ms. James narrates the audiobook herself and did a great job - she has a very pleasant speaking voice and warm, natural reading style.

This is a wonderful book about a family that moves to Paris for a year. It follows them through their year, the adjustments, the fun of exploration and the magic of Paris. I couldn't stop listening.

Yes, the way it is written. This book is written in short snip-its of unrelated topics. It could be a books of tweets! Not very interesting because there is no story here, just a family's daily encounters as they live in Paris.

The author narrates the book and she does so with a see-saw rythm and it is a little annoying.

I thought I would love this book because I am so enchanted with Paris, and I want to do what Ms. James did and spend a year in Paris (sans enfant). I also love travel memoirs, and was sold on reading this book when I read the cover blurb written by Elizabeth Gilbert. However, this was no Eat, Pray, Love. I understand that the author wanted to give a slice of life feeling to the book by just re-printing and/or expounding her Twitter and Facebook entries from the year she lived in Paris, but instead of coming of as charming insights into her year as it happened, it just comes across as disjointed observations. She had good intentions, and there are a few nice spots, but there is not much of a story at all, so it mostly just felt like reading somebody's Twitter feed. She didn't make me want to invest in what happened to her or her family. If you enjoy watching "slide shows" from people's travels, or reading Facebook entries about the daily dramas of a girl who is the daughter of somebody you sat next to in high school, then you will probably enjoy this book. I however, just kept saying in my head to the author, "Only you think that is cute because you are their mother. It's really not that cute."

I haven't heard or read any others.

It seemed like she was trying too hard to be cute. It came out as took sing-songy and annoying after a while.

Boredom.

Nice effort, but didn't quite work.

enjoyable, interesting, enlightening

I enjoyed listening to her reaction to the homeless people she encounters.

Since it is her experience, she reads it in a way that let's you relive it.

I would have listened in one sitting, but that's not a reality for me. But I listened every chance I got.

I've never wanted to visit Paris, but she gave me insights into a Paris I didn't know before.

Unlikely

Weave the blog entries into themes

The "book" is not a narrative story, but rather is a bound collection of the authors daily blog or journal entries. These entries are not paragraphs with a theme- they are snippits as short as a few words stretched into a legal sentence or as long as a few sentences about something the author's family dealt with on a given date. I enjoyed the discussions about the family's dining experiences, which seem to play a central role in the book and clearly in Ms. James' own interests. I also enjoyed her discussions about unique aspects of life in Paris such as the interactions with the homeless. Given Ms. James' self-described bout with cancer, it is understandable, but no less detracting, that this book is an introspective on her family rather than a story about what it is like living abroad (as might be inferred from the book's title).

Umm- no

Did finish this but would not try any more by this author.

The story has no tension, no point and is very mundane. I am not sure anyone could make these anecdotes interesting. At the end of the book, there is a story about a Fan who is dying of cancer. This is really the only remotely interesting part of the book. If your best friend told you these bits of her life, maybe you could tolerate it for a while, It is a bit like seeing someone's vacation photos.... I suspect fans of her literature might be more interested. Not me.