French Dirt by Richard Goodman
The Magic of Provence by Yvone Lenard

Cigale, I'd forgotten about Window on Provence; it was quite touching.

COMING DOWN THE SEINE Gibbings
THREE RIVERS IN FRANCE Freda White
THE FLANEUR Edmund White
PARIS TO THE MOON Gopnik
C'EST LA VIE Gershman

I don't think anyone has mentioned these two:
The Piano Shop on the Left Bank--Thad Carhart
My Life in France--Julia Child
Me Talk Pretty One Day (Part Deux)--david Sedaris

and how about A Moveable Feast?

John Merriman's <i>The Stones of Balazuc; A French Village in Time</i>

Jane Webster's <i>At My French Table; Food, Family and joie de vivre in a corner of Normandy</i>

Mort Rosenblum's <i>Secret Life of the Seine</i> and
<i>A Goose in Toulouse; And Other Culinary Adventures in France</i>

Michael Sanders' <i>Families of the Vine; Seasons Among the Winemakers of Southwest France</i>

Elaine Lewis's <i>Left Bank Waltz; The Australian Bookshop in Paris</i>

I just read Harriet Welty Rochefort's "French Toast." It was kind of fun.

I'm printing out this thread and heading over to half.com.

Great suggestions.

I enjoyed Caro's "Road to the Past" which I had never heard of before Fodorites recommended. It's more history than buy and renovate a house, but interesting.

All of you have just made my day---and my summer as a matter of fact. I've only read a few of these and I am constantly searching out books that take place in France, our favorite place to travel.

Merci,Merci!

Polly Platt's books - though i do not agree with many of her observations about Paris and French culture you may get a laugh or two.

My goodness, barnum, you have done a lot of reading! I`d like to order a couple from your list. Any 2 or 3 that you would recommend as being the most interesting? I can`t order your whole list! Thanks.

He didn't live there, he just spent three weeks cycling the route of the Tour de France, but Tim Moore's French revolutions is one of the funniest books I've read for ages. Most of the humour is at his own expense rather than snide anti-French comments.
Jeremy
www.jeremytaylor.eu

I heartily recommend Jean-Benoît Nadeau's "Les Français Aussi ont un Accent", subtitled, "Mésadventures Anthropologiques d'un Québécois en Vielle-France". He and his wife Julie Barlow spent two years in France looking at the French, as he says, "with the same approach of anthropologists towards the Yanomani in the interior Amazon" It's very witty and perceptive.

If you don't read French, they also wrote an account in English of their experience, "60 Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong". It's not a translation, but is also quite good. (In fact, it was later translated for the French market as "Pas si fous, ces Français!")

It's hard to add to any of this, given the extensive nature of the lists. There is one sequel to On Rue Tatin- Tarte Tatin; one to The Pioensing Sun- La Belle Saison; one to One step Forwards:- Two Steps Backward and two to the Olive Farm:- the Olive Season and the Olive Harvest. I would strongly recommend 60 Million Frenchmen- it taught we more about France than anything else has.

I have, however, also read "The Luberon Garden" by Alex Dingwall Main; "The Man Who Married a Mountain"- which is not like the others at all, but is a wonderful book about the Pyrenees which I would recommend to anyone.

A number of people have mentioned Michael Sanders' excellent "From Here, You Can't See Paris". I found it a refreshing change from the "Year in Provence" genre of books in that it was about the people living around him, not about himself.

His subsequent book, "Families of the Vine: Seasons Among the Winemakers of Southwest France" is about a number of winemakers in the area of Cahors.

I have thoroughly enjoyed and learned much from both books.

This is an awesome list... I've read a few but there are so many more to discover! I'm going to check to see what my local library has.

The Secret Life of the Seine (Mort Rosenblum). About living on a barge on the Seine, but also history and geography too.

since this drifted from People who have home there, I
can add a few.
Provence A-Z...peter Mayle.
Out to Lunch in Provence...Mike Aalders,
A corner of the Marais...Alex Karnel,
Pagnol's Provence...Julian Moore,
Time was soft there...Jeremy Mercer
(a Canadian who goes to work and live at Shakespeare&Co.),
A Goose In Toulouse...Mort Rosenblum,
We'll Always have paris...Harvy Lenenstein
(about American tourists since 1930),
Three Rivers Of France...Freda white,
provence...Ford Maddox Ford,
Memories of Childhood...Marcel Pagnol,
most books by MFK Fisher,
YoYo in provence..douglas Duncan( the true story of his dog
kidnapped by gypsies. He also wrote Picasso&Lump, Lump was Picasso's dog. Duncan is a famous journalist/photographer and was a friend pof Picasso, whom he's written about),
Kiki's Paris...Klover&Martin,(famous model and mistress of Man Ray and others),
Pariss 1900...borse&Godoli (anout the architecture),
fiction:perfume...Patrick susskind.
The Elegance of the Hedgehog,
Across Paris...Marcel Aimee
and reference:
Undiscovered France,
Undiscovered Paris, Secrets of Provence

typo:That smily should be a P as in Perfume

Aha, cigale,

You tried to write:

&nbsp; fiction: Perfume

But, probably due to a typo, you left off the space after the colon, so you wrote:

&nbsp; fiction:Perfume

But Fodor's saw the :P part, and automatically expanded it into the smiley :P

<i>et voilà</i>.

(See the Fodor's page on smileys at:

http://www.fodors.com/community/smileys/

That one is in the second row from the bottom.)

- Larry

Six more that I didn't have on my list...

Hot Sun...Cool Shadow by Angela Murrills
Life in a Postcard....by Rosemary Bailey
Mourjou....by Peter Graham
A Summer in Gascony by Martin Calder
Bight Sun & Long Shadows, by Val Littman
Seeking Provence by Nicholas Woodsworth