I Want to Be French: 9 Books Full of Joie de Vivre

A MOVEABLE FEAST is a love letter to La Ville Lumière and a testament to Hemingway’s boundless artistic ambition. Permeating every page is the heartbreaking story of love gained and lost.

Read Peter Golden’s review here.

Taking up where his A Year in Provence leaves off, Mayle offers another funny, beautifully evocative book about life in Provence, an historic region of southeastern France. With tales only one who lives there could know—of finding gold coins while digging in the garden, of indulging in sumptuous feasts at truck stops—and with characters introduced with great affection and wit—this is a heart-warming portrait of a place where, if you can't quite "get away from it all," you can surely have a very good time trying.

When Jennifer Scott, a California girl, went to study abroad in Paris, she found a mentor in her host mother, Madame Chic. Madame Chic taught her the lessons of living a beautiful life, and lucky for us, Jennifer has published those lessons. Her experience reminded me of my own as a student in Paris, which makes me love this book even more.

You can read my full review of LESSONS FROM MADAME CHIC here.

If you loved A MOVEABLE FEAST, you should try PARIS TO THE MOON. Adam Gopnik, a longtime writer for the New Yorker, spent several years based in Paris. This delightful collection of essays, some previously published in the New Yorker, are funny and contemplative at once. I always feel nostalgic for Paris when I read them.

From the first perfectly soigné meal that she and her husband savored en route to their new life in Paris, Julia Child had an awakening that changed her life. Soon this tall, outspoken California girl was chatting with purveyors in local markets and enrolling in Le Cordon Bleu. Filled with photographs and laced with the good spirit that made her such an extraordinary success, Julia’s memoir of falling in love with French food makes for the perfect winter escape.

In 2009, Eloisa James sold her house, took a sabbatical from her job as a Shakespeare professor, and moved her family to Paris. This book chronicles her joyful year there. She revels in the ordinary pleasures of life and copes with her family's own adjustments and trials in a new country and foreign language.

This blog-turned-book is hilariously suited for those who know Paris fairly well, but who really want to understand the quirks of living and acting like a local. "To be mistaken for a Parisian, readers must buy the newspaper Le Monde, fold it, and walk. Then sit at a café and make phone calls. ... Feel free to boldly cross the street whenever the impulse strikes-pedestrian crosswalks are too dangerous."

Downie arrived in Paris in 1986 on a one-way ticket. His curiosity propelled him daily from his unheated, seventh-floor walk-up apartment to explore both the glamorous and the least-known corners and characters of the world’s favorite city.

In this enchanting memoir, long- time Paris resident John Baxter remembers his yearlong experience of giving "literary walking tours" through the city. Baxter sets off with unsuspecting tourists in tow on the trail of Paris's legendary artists and writers of the past.