A bestseller in France under the title "Le Sel de la Vie," it is a paratactic list of wonderful ordinary things that are superb - my favorite is "just having time for a mouthful of cocktail." One problem is that some of the things she likes don't sound very nice to me any more. One great thing is that she announces at the outset that she's not going to put on her list anything having to do with "that dreadful thing which Freud calls 'sex'" (in the words of the immortal Lucia).
On the other hand, it does make one think about one's own sel de la vie, and perhaps it does well to remember it

Ninety-three, the last of Victor Hugo's novels, is regarded by many including such diverse critics as Robert Louis Stevenson and André Maurois as his greatest work.

1793, Year Two of the Republic, saw the establishment of the National Convention, the execution of Louis XVI, the Terror, and the monarchist revolt in the Vendée, brutally suppressed by the Republic. Hugo's epic follows three protagonists through this tumultuous year: the noble royalist de Lantenac; Gauvain, who embodies a benevolent and romantic vision of the Republic; and Cimourdain, whose principles are altogether more robespierrean.The conflict of values culminates in a dramatic climax on the scaffold.

Hugo's first novel shows scant traces of the brilliance to come but it's a ripping tale of adventure and intrigue with a monstrous villain, the author's first monster, though hardly a sympathetic one. Many of the chapters are made up almost entirely of conversations, which makes me wonder if the novel was not originally conceived as a play. The reliance of several plot points on stagey, Shakespearian mistakes about the identity of characters reinforces that notion. There is also a strong note of humor, as though Hugo could not quite take his own melodrama seriously. All-in-all, a good Gothic adventure and worthwhile reading for anyone interested in the roots of genius

So, here we have dull, inert, 40-ish Michel, who hates his job, has no partner or other meaningful relationship, and in fact no interests at all in life. The only thing that he actually enjoys is patronizing the occasional prostitute. When he's able to afford it, he goes off to Thailand for a spot of sex tourism. As he wistfully tells us, Thai prostitutes are the best in the world. I recently read the same thing in another French novel, and for all I know it's true. We get to see a couple of Michel's encounters with Thai massage girls; these scenes were nicely done, and came across as credible. The girls are sympathetically portrayed.

On his trip, Michel meets Valérie, an attractive 28 year old. He doesn't quite manage to respond to her obvious advances, but she gives him her telephone number. Shortly after they get back to Paris, they get together. Things completely click between them.

While there are facts in this book, Jacq seems to have filled out the information available with his own experiences as an Egyptologist and a Frenchman's romantic point of view. Far from detracting, it gives Howard Carter a soul that I doubt he had in real life. HC was definitely a thief as some proclaim him in this book; his butler revealed a false wall in his house filled with Ancient Egyptian artifacts.

 A loving son's epitaph to his mother. Ben Jelloun chronicles the final years of his illiterate but verbally gifted mother, quoting many of her seemingly endless, spiralling monologues, peppered with reminiscences, quran quotes and flowery blessings. Alzheimer's desease makes Lalla Fatma loose her footing in the here and now, and she gradually withdraws into her own history, her childhood in Fez in the 1940s and the company of loved-ones long since dead. Ben Jelloun's memoir is written with touching reverence, and yet unsentimental in its description of the harsh realities of the final stages of his mother's illness. In retelling the most important aspects of her life – marriages, births, cooking, childcare – the book also serves as a literary monument to a vanishing culture, and re-evaluates what a woman's life then was restricted to

In January 1917, five wounded French soldiers, their hands bound behind them, are brought to the front at Picardy by their own troops, forced into the no-man's land between the French and German armies, and left to die in the cross fire. Their brutal punishment has been hushed up for more than two years when Mathilde Donnay, unable to walk since childhood, begins a relentless quest to find out whether her fiancé, officially "killed in the line of duty," might still be alive. Tipped off by a letter from a dying soldier, the shrewd, sardonic, and wonderfully imaginative Mathilde scours the country for information about the men. As she carries her search to its end, an elaborate web of deception and coincidence emerges, and Mathilde comes to an understanding of the horrors, and the acts of kindness, brought about by war.

A runaway bestseller in France and the winner of the 1991 Prix Interallié, this astonishing novel is many things at once: an absorbing mystery, a playful study of the different ways one story can be told, a moving and incisive portrait of life in France during and after the First World War, and a love story of transforming power and beauty.

The first work available in English translation by the major French writer, Regis Jauffret, is a dialogue between the narrator and a young woman who has been suicided - also once his lover. Through laughter, tears, derision and madness, they tell of the bond beyond loneliness and of love that defeats absence. Jauffret is renowned for his use of jubilant language that explores the depths of the soul with tenderness. Lacrimosa, with its devastating beauty and merciless sincerity, introduces his oeuvre to English readers with a powerful, provocative punch.

Queen Ahhotep is fighting to free her country (Egypt) from the barbaric Hyksos who have occupied and dominated her land for 100 years. This queen was a warrior, freedom-fighter, wife and mother of two sons. This queen actually lived and was honored and awarded many times over for her courageous acts during the struggle (her tomb has been found along with her mummy, coffin and mementos and awards from her life. She lost her husband and oldest son in the war but lived to see her second son become a mighty Pharaoh and start a proud dynasty that would create the golden age of Egyptian culture. Queen Ahhotep lived to about 90 years of age

A backward chronology of an aspect of the holocaust of which I wasn't aware, told by each generation of the family during their sixth year of life. Each six year old has a somewhat naive view of adult things happening around them, save Sol. His chapter (the opening) made me think of him as the poster child for monitoring your child's internet, television and video use. Disturbing as all getout. But not, I'm afraid, far from the truth. What's really interesting is that a lot of the pornography, hate, violence, fear and bigotry he finds on the internet his grandmother, to a degree, dealt with in real life and real time.

Paris in 1941 is no longer the capital of a land of asylum which sports for motto the fronton of its town halls "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity
". Paris is a busy city where the Nazi enemy imposes its exceptional laws and the wearing of the yellow star to all Jews. Their mother has
sewn on the back of the jacket of Maurice and Joseph before leaving for school 

Few people, apart from the sick of the American West, his history and his literature, know who Dorothy M. Johnson is. She is
simply, for the teachers, 'the best female author who has written on the West, since Mary Austin'. But who reads Mary Austin? Not
you, not me. On the other hand, you would probably read the news of Dorothy M. Johnson collected in his 2 big books Contrée
Indian
and Hill of the gallows, if they were available in France  

Martyrs to hypochondria and general seediness, J. and his friends George and Harris decide that a jaunt up the Thames would suit them to a 'T'. But when they set off, they can hardly predict the troubles that lie ahead with tow-ropes, unreliable weather forecasts and tins of pineapple chunks - not to mention the devastation left in the wake of J.'s small fox-terrier Montmorency. Three Men in a Boat was an instant success when it appeared in 1889, and, with its benign escapism, authorial discursions and wonderful evocation of the late-Victorian 'clerking classes', it hilariously captured the spirit of its age.

it is a daring and profound analysis of the ravages of war, colonialism and post colonialist racial tensions in France. We follow two heroes through an Illiad of sorts: WWII, Indochina and Algeria, none of them proud moments for France... and then there is the inevitable Odyssey that follows: the modern day wanderings of the narrator, the novel's other hero, among a racially diverse and therefore downtrodden population parked in the increasingly sad suburbs of major French cities. Our two heroes are not what they seem: is the artist turned warrior really an accidental para-trooper who crossed all those wars without soiling his hands and his soul? Is today's narrator a true modern day Bardamu, or a shameless opportunist?
Is France really a country so refined as to have gladly engaged in one nameless form of treason after another and in a continuous flow of artful acts of torture and violence since WWII? Is my country's deserved fate bringing such warfare on its doorstep today, in the big cities where cars burn and tempers flare up?
The answer, obvious as it is, needed confirmation!

An attractive woman visits various homes and reads passages from Maupassant, Marx (Karl), Perec, and Pope Clement VII to a wheelchaired teenager, an eccentric Marxist-aristocrat, a sex-starved corporate loon, and a small child deprived of amusement, and attempts to engage her readees in the act of being readed. The novel features no pat lessons on the wondrous transcendence of reading (which might have been welcome), but focuses instead on whimsical comedy, and the heroine’s often smug superiority to everyone else, which proves amusing for the short duration.

These two are written by mail for weeks, and tonight finally they will see each other. They cross in a train, in a word their life can change. There is this woman who does not kiss, another, elusive, who keeps her lover at a distance by hiding behind a cell phone number, and that single mother who loves without waking her son. Or again this man, who scrolls through as many memories the numbers of his repertoire. How many times do you like in a life? Seventeen encounters, seventeen stories to tell, on the thread of emotion, which one never stops loving. 

This volume of the Journaliers begins with a text, one of the most personal and most significant that the author wrote. In his various essays he seemed in search of a treatise on morality, which finds here its definitive expression, the most perfect. From these abstract considerations we move on to an everyday confession where Jouhandeau discovers us a Universe at once blessed and tormented, his own. Marcel Jouhandeau knows how to stop, to kneel, to love, to enjoy, to live with an elegance, a pride, a humility that belongs only to him.

The sixteenth volume of Les Journaliers is a hymn to joy. Love remains the main concern of Jouhandeau. It is shared in
1964 between Emmanuel Pluton, a superb Martiniquais, and Castor who lives in Germany and swore never to see him. These two
passions allow him to endure the annoyances of Elise. His only concern comes from his adoptive grandson whom he must protect from
her stepfather.

The Highlands Queen is not the name of a Scottish regiment but a brand of whiskey, of which B., the narrator, uses and abuses, in the company of an unknown, the elegant Mrs Foy, ex-stewardess, whom he meets almost every night in a bar. To tell the truth, neither one likes this alcohol ... 

Kipling portrays school as the first stage of a much larger game, a pattern maker for the experiences of life. Implied throughout the book is the question 'What happened to the fifteen-year boys, and how did the lessons they learned at school apply to the world of warfare and imperial government?' These stories are based on Kipling's own schooling, the United Services College at Westward Ho! in Devon. 

In this seventeenth volume of Journalists Jouhandeau feels himself dedicated to the Gemini. Everyday humiliated by Elise, he torments himself
about Celine, abused by her husband, about their children, especially little Marc. He also recounts his memories on
Gueret, on Proust's valet de chambre, on a very respectable hostess of a very particular kind. The correspondence he exchanges
with Beaver, the young German of twenty-eight, gives him an unparalleled joy and allows him to overcome the temptations of sadness
and despair that sometimes assail him.

America in the 1940s. From their first meeting, in high school, for John and Doug it is love at first sight, they become inseparable.
At that age, we believe in friendship. When they realize that it is about love, it's too late: everyone is afraid of the gestures that
could hurt the other person's image of him, and both hide their feelings and keep quiet. After college, the rich
John's family is thinking of marrying him: Ethel has everything for her, beauty and property. But only Doug exists in John's eyes. And this is the
drama. Many years later, Ethel tells their story to Tom, a young man who reminds him of the other two, as if to
redeem himself and allow him to live according to his desires. For ever, drama of a passion that can not be fulfilled, is a
love story and friendship as Eric Jourdan has the secret

Life has been good for Becky Bloomwood: She’s become the best personal shopper at Barneys, she and her successful entrepreneurial boyfriend, Luke, are living happily in Manhattan’s West Village, and her new next-door neighbor is a fashion designer! But with her best friend, Suze, engaged, how can Becky fail to notice that her own ring finger is bare? Not that she’s been thinking of marriage (or diamonds) or anything . . . Then Luke proposes! Bridal registries dance in Becky’s head. Problem is, two other people are planning her wedding: Becky’s overjoyed mother has been waiting forever to host a backyard wedding, with the bride resplendent in Mum’s frilly old gown. While Luke’s high-society mother is insisting on a glamorous, all-expenses-paid affair at the Plaza. Both weddings for the same day. And Becky can’t seem to turn down either one. Can everyone’s favorite shopaholic tie the knot before everything unravels?

With it's startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first opening, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. It is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetle-like insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. A harrowing—though absurdly comic—meditation on human feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and isolation, The Metamorphosishas taken its place as one of the most widely read and influential works of twentieth-century fiction. As W.H. Auden wrote, "Kafka is important to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man."

In the Penal Colony :The plot is grim but simple. A traveller to a tropical penal colony is invited to watch their unique method of execution: a complex machine (the Harrow) engraves the words of the offence in an illegible script. The condemned man usually dies about 12 hours later, but as the words are drilled into him, he is supposed to experience a moment of revelation and regret.
The machine is explained in graphic detail by the officer who has devoted years to its upkeep and worships it almost as much as he worships the previous commander who invented it. The officer is despairing that the new commander is not enlightened enough to give full support to the method and fears the commander wants to abolish it.

Moving from the Quranic teaching of Diallobe to the French university, the young Samba Diallo has to face exile and identity breaches. His learning, philosophical, ethical and spiritual, retraces the itinerary of a mixed Africa in search of itself. Where rises, flamboyant, the clamor of a people in need of existence.

A French writer, (the author? He is never named) visits as a tourist one of the national parks in Kenya, a reserve for wild animals. He gets involved with Patricia, a 9-year old girl with an uncanny power on animals, whose best friend is an adult lion that she had cared for when it was a baby.

The narrator feels himself unable to leave the Park, wanting to "see the end" of the story, which suddenly hastens when Patricia tries to introduce in her personal playground a "morane", a Masai warrior who wants to kill a lion to win her love... 

Todd Anderson and his friends at Welton Academy can hardly believe how different life is since their new English professor, the flamboyant John Keating, has challenged them to "make your lives extraordinary! " Inspired by Keating, the boys resurrect the Dead Poets Society--a secret club where, free from the constraints and expectations of school and parents, they let their passions run wild. As Keating turns the boys on to the great words of Byron, Shelley, and Keats, they discover not only the beauty of language, but the importance of making each moment count.But the Dead Poets pledges soon realize that their newfound freedom can have tragic consequences. Can the club and the individuality it inspires survive the pressure from authorities determined to destroy their dreams?

A writer, still searching for himself, leaves Paris to stay not far from Rodez in a hamlet where he meets a secret young girl.
A young painter falls in love with an actress who is older than him and to whom, because of their respective situations, he can not say anything about what he feels. He will only be able to talk to her openly after living a long time away from her.
During a hike in the Hoggar, an industrialist is passionate about a photographer who has nothing in common with him.
Three men who can not tell women how much they love them. Three new modest and moving that show that a rising love can lead to engage in the long adventure of the quest of oneself.

It's about life. How does one live it. How does one deal with the vicissitudes of it. The tragedies. the failures. Does one stand on the sidelines of life and never jump in? does one fear getting married or fear having children or fear doing any activity that could fail or come to naught? Zorba tells us what to do. And in the end, when the whole bloody mess comes falling down around us, and all our plans and schemes are for naught, what do you do? Dance. Dance as hard and as wild as you can. Spit and fume and sing and smash your heels into the dirt. And laugh at it all. the absurdity of worry and wondering. The joy of just "being" and "doing". 

In this work, the author wanted to celebrate his two mothers: the lonely and the valiant, the smothered and the brave, the pier-in-the-pit and the all-given.
The first, the one that gave birth to her, a peasant woman, following an unhappy love, a marriage that disappointed her, then four maternities close together, sank into a deep depression. Hospitalized one month after the birth of her last child, she died eight years later in terrible conditions.
The second, the mother of a large family, also a peasant, took this child and raised him as if he had been his son.
After having evoked these two moving figures, the author briefly recounts his career. In doing so, he tells us of the birth of a man who has triumphed over the "unthinkable distress" of which he was a prisoner. That's why Lambeaux is above all a book of hope.

Darkness at Noon stands as an unequaled fictional portrayal of the nightmare politics of our time. Its hero is an aging revolutionary, imprisoned and psychologically tortured by the Party to which he has dedicated his life. As the pressure to confess preposterous crimes increases, he relives a career that embodies the terrible ironies and human betrayals of a totalitarian movement masking itself as an instrument of deliverance. Almost unbearably vivid in its depiction of one man's solitary agony, it asks questions about ends and means that have relevance not only for the past but for the perilous present. It is —- as the Times Literary Supplement has declared —- "A remarkable book, a grimly fascinating interpretation of the logic of the Russian Revolution, indeed of all revolutionary dictatorships, and at the same time a tense and subtly intellectualized drama."