Any recommendations on some must-reads during my trip to Paris in May? Nothing too heavy, please...I like to find a spot to park myself and read a chapter or so at a time while people-watching between pages!

Ah I'm visiting Paris in June, and that's a question I wanted to ask too.

I intend to read Victor Hugo's "Hunchback of Notre Dame", and have read many of Dumas' novels as a kid. But I'm looking for something more contemporary. Could anyone recommend a novel based in or around Paris (NOT the Da Vinci Code, please!)? What about French books with available English translations?

Diane Johnson's "Le Divorce;" Cara Black's "Murder in the Marais;" Diane Johnson's latest, "Into a Paris Quartier."

Suzie Gershman "C'est La Vie"
pretty light but not every book has to be "lit er a ture"

Sit yourself down at Les Deux Magots with a café c

Sit yourself down at Les Deux Magots with a café crème and a copy of Sartre's "Being and Nothingness". Just the thing to get you in the mood.

Seriously, if you haven't read them, Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast" and Callaghan's "That Summer in Paris" beautifully capture the expatriate life in the 1930's. Also, for a great sense of place, is Thad Carhart's "Piano Shop on the Left Bank."

I suggest you find one of Art Buchwald's memoirs. Art was a longtime columnist for the Paris Herald Tribune from 1948 to 1962. "I'll Always have Paris!" was published in 1996. Another is Stephen Clarke's "A Year in the Merde" published in 2004.

Both are humorous and can be picked up and put down easily.

"We'll Always have Paris-Sex and love in the city of Paris." by John Baxter

"Time was Soft There." (A Paris Sojourn
at Shakespeare & Co." by Jeremy Mercer. a Canadian who flees his country and goes to stay at the bookshop.

I had dinner a few nights ago with Car Black after she appeared at my local bookstore for her latest book, 'Murder in the Montmartre." I a;lso bought her "Murder in the Bastille."

Books recently read or reread:
"Murder in the Marais"
"A Corner in the Marais." by Alex Karmel, his apartment was a few doors down from my Hotel and this book is laced with alot of information on Augustus's Wall.

"True Pleasures," a memoir of Women in Pars by Lucinda Holdforth

"Unexplored Paris" by Rodolphe Trouilleux.

If you want some fascinating reading about Paris and the expatriates during the Great War and afterward, you might try Hugh Ford’s Four Lives in Paris, Waverly Root’s The Paris Edition, and Robert McAlmon’s Being Geniuses Together. These will give you more insight into some of the less celebrated artistic figures and associated hangers-on during the period.