1. ISBN13: 9780316042796
2. Condition: NEW
3. Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Editorial Review :

In Paris for a weekend visit, Elizabeth Bard sat down to lunch with a handsome Frenchman--and never went home again.

Was it love at first sight? Or was it the way her knife slid effortlessly through her pavé au poivre, the steak'spink juices puddling into the buttery pepper sauce? LUNCH IN PARIS is a memoir about a young American woman caught up in two passionate love affairs--one with her new beau, Gwendal, the other with French cuisine. Packing her bags for a new life in the world's most romantic city, Elizabeth is plunged into a world of bustling open-air markets, hipster bistros, and size 2 femmes fatales. She learns to gut her first fish (with a little help from Jane Austen), soothe pangs of homesickness (with the rise of a chocolate soufflé) and develops a crush on her local butcher (who bears a striking resemblance to Matt Dillon). Elizabeth finds that the deeper she immerses herself in the world of French cuisine, the more Paris itself begins to translate. French culture, she discovers, is not unlike a well-ripened cheese-there may be a crusty exterior, until you cut through to the melting, piquant heart.

Peppered with mouth-watering recipes for summer ratatouille, swordfish tartare and molten chocolate cakes, Lunch in Paris is a story of falling in love, redefining success and discovering what it truly means to be at home. In the delicious tradition of memoirs like A Year in Provence and Under the Tuscan Sun, this book is the perfect treat for anyone who has dreamed that lunch in Paris could change their life.

Customer Review :

Pleasant enough, but nothing memorable

This is the account of an American woman who moves to Paris and marries her French boyfriend (who's not at all a stereotype - he's a tapdancing engineer with the unlikely name of Gwendal). It's about how she adapts to living in Paris and how she falls in love with the city and the cuisine. She ends every chapter with some of her favorite recipes, so it's part memoir, part travelogue, part recipe book.

Unfortunately Elizabeth just isn't as interesting as she thinks she is. There's too much about her - I love history! I grew up surrounded by women! I like eating! - and not enough objectively about the experience of moving to a new country. Parts of the book also felt like they had been taken verbatim from emails to her mother (eg "tonight when I came out of the Louvre I noticed them cleaning the windows").

Some of the most interesting parts for me were the way that she starts to find fault in so many aspects of the American culture. She pokes fun at American tourists and sneers at her mother for assuming that things will operate in Europe as they do in the US. Over my life I've lived in seven different countries, and it got me thinking about the way that I have adapted and assimilated. I was also interested in her views on the differences between American vs French attitudes, how what is quite acceptable in the US is seen as pushy in France and how Americans show their power by helping whereas the French show their power by blocking progress.

The integration of the recipes (more than 60) feels very natural given Elizabeth's obsession with food. (She's the kind of writer who describes walls as being the color of butter or a sweater as being the color of warm milk.) While I haven't tried any, for the most part they sound tasty and easy to follow. They are also included in the index.

While I found the book okay, I got bored towards the end, because ultimately it doesn't go anywhere. It felt like Bard wrote it because she had nothing better to do with her time. There are better books that cover similar territory. Almost French: Love and a New Life in Paris is one which I recommend, or if the foodie aspect is what appeals, try The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears in Paris at the World's Most Famous Cooking School

Rating :

light and entertaining, with excellent recipes

For the lovers of everything French, "Lunch in Paris" is a nice pastime. Elizabeth Bard wrote up the story of her romance leading to a happy marriage with a Frenchman, lacing it with many recipes for French food.

Studying for a Master's degree, Elizabeth attended a conference in Paris, where she met Gwendal, a PhD student, and she let herself be seduced by his personality and lifestyle, falling in love with him and with Parisian life at the same time. She wanders around Paris, eating in typical French restaurants, making observations of differences between French and American homes, families, attitude to work... There are some recommendations of restaurants which sound amazing, and the Paris which emerges from her story is even more alluring than the one from guidebooks (and very realistic).

There are many similar books, in the boom that started with Peter Mayle - pleasant literary holidays for those who cannot go to their dream places. "Lunch in Paris" is not very original and fill of clichés, but it is written with humor and wit, and the recipes are excellent and not too hard to follow (I have tried some already: yoghurt cake, savory cake, lentils, ratatouille - and all of them worked). In fact, I think that the recipes may be the best part of the whole book. The narrative part is a bit naïve, banal and stereotypic, but it reads fast and is a pleasant distraction from everyday life.

Rating :

recipes are just ok; story? so-so

Like a few of the other reviewers, I though this book was boring and quite difficult to get into. I persisted and found the author's tone a bit smug and condescending. The end of the book starts to have a little heart but I never really connected or cared about the author or any other characters and I love paris and french food. Disappointing.

Rating :

A Transforming Lunch The Parisenne Way

A young girl goes to Paris for the weekend. A young pretty American girl goes to Paris for the weekend and is invited to lunch by a good looking Frenchman. And, life for this young girl will never be the same.

Elizabeth Bard from New Jersey travels to London to find herself and a job. She had a major in art and finds little bits and pieces to keep body and soul together. On a weekend in Paris she finds the Frenchman. Not the man of her dreams, but a dreamy man. They fall in love, move in together and then the meeting of the families. The overwrought American parents meet the laid back French parents. Soon everyone loves each other. And, Elizabeth, well, she is still trying to find herself. She does some freelance jobs and learns to cook. She learns to order from the meat market, choose the right veggies and fruits and finds Paris is her home. Gwendall, her French boyfriend proposes and a wedding is planned. A small quiet affair, a new apartment and a new life. Elizabeth finds her place. Elizabeth has many adventures as an American in Paris, and she shares and handles them with aplomb. The upstair neighbors who won't leave. The 38 course New Years cooked by her father-in-law- one of the best meals she has ever had. Shopping for shoes and clothes, walking and exploring all of Paris, she brings this to us and we love it.

Elizabeth Bard intersperse her stories of life with recipes and they look and sound wonderful. These are recipes from her family, and then from her husband's family. I tried her chocolate pudding cake and it is delicious. She gives advice with her recipes and shortcuts that make sense. She writes in a manner that causes interest and empathy. She is bright and witty. Paris and the French are explained in a manner that should interest every American. By the way, while riding the subway never talk about your sex life, how much you detest the French, the person sitting next to you probably understands English!

Recommended. prisrob 02-21-10



Rating :

A Michelin-starred restaurant meal , prepared by a sous-chef

To be clear, this review is a straight 3 stars.

Like many of these reviewers, I too love all things French. In no small way, it is because that is my heritage. So, I too have spent much time in Paris, and thought this book would be an entertaining and insightful read. Not quite. While Elizabeth Bard has some expressive ways of describing French tendencies, it is apparent that she thought she should do this at the expense of her American heritage. Frankly, I find that boring. Plus the addition of recipes is so cliche, that I have no interest in trying them. (I had a similarly negative reaction to Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes, but in that case I also disliked Mayes puerile writing style immensely).

What is good is that Bard's writing is amusing once you get past the opening line. Her turn of phrase is clever and reasonably well articulated. Even her story is compelling. But she provides too many intimate details about her "affair" with her then first date/now husband, and not enough details about trying to assimilate into a French family. The cultural and societal differences between the US and France are well known, as are the issues that come to any couple that is newly married. Since this is a memoir, why not explore in depth her trials and tribulations of fitting into a culturally different family? And, by the way, how about addressing his familial expectations and experiences with her American counterpart, and how the two of them transcend the familial issues? Not only is she capable of writing humorous antidotes about each family on personal level, without the intimate or belittling overtones, but more of that would have been "fascinating" to read. Not so her descriptions of sex, society, and the US vs. French governments. As others have noted, the last half is more interesting than the first half. Bard should understand the difference, if she wants her writing to grow. Her first book, is a quick read, with a cute story, but her personal details could have included a more intriguing bent. And, NOTE TO PUBLISHERS, enough already with the memoirs infiltrated with recipes!

Rating :

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1. ISBN13: 9781598802870
2. Condition: NEW
3. Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
4. Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Editorial Review :

Customer Review :

You Still Need Another Book

My wife and I bought two books to Paris with us. Rick Steves book and the Travelling Professor's Guide to Paris.

Rick Steves book has EVERYTHING in it. So, if you need to know about the Rocky Horror Picture Show (page 448) or staying in a Youth Hostel (I am 54 years old) or even where to find a public urinal (page 300) and you want to carry around a 617 page book with you, Rick Steves Paris is what you should buy.

However, the other book we used easily fit in my wife's purse and it had everything we needed to know in a book that was about 1/4 of the size of Rick Steves book.

My assessment: Rick Steves book is good but it has way too much useless stuff in it.

Rating :

Happy with my first Rick Steves guidebook purchase!

Although I use Amazon reviews for most of my buying research, this is one of the handful of times I feel compelled to put in my 10 cents. My friend and I went to Paris a couple months ago - my first time, her second time. Our edition, purchased in December 2009, had no publishing mistakes. Despite being tempted to buy the full-color Fodor's Paris 2010 guide, I eventually decided to give Rick Steves' hand-drawn maps and self-guided museum tours a shot.

My friend and I are very glad I did. We dragged this book all over Paris with us in a small backpack purse. We were able to find almost everything we needed in the book, no matter where we were, whether it be checking on hours/maps for a museum or looking for restaurant recommendations while walking down Rue Mouffetard/around Versailles. We liked the doing-as-the-French-do approach to the guidebook, e.g. Metro etiquette (pp. 30-31) and Parisian cuisine explanations (pp. 387-397). Back at our hotel, while one of us was napping or in the shower, the other was often chuckling over Rick Steves' commentary - learning more about things we'd seen the day before or preparing for the day to come. We used the book so much that my friend has decided to buy a copy (and a small backpack purse to carry it in) for her next trip to Paris!

A few tips:
1) On "What the Paris Museum Pass Covers" (p. 43), it is not mentioned that the pass does NOT include the Versailles audioguide. (There's a brief blurb in the Versailles Day Trip chapter, but we didn't see it until we were already on the train there. Also, not sure if the increase in audioguide price from 6 to 7 euros is recent or seasonal.) Be sure to download the free audioguide from Rick Steves' website. Aside from the continued savings, our iPods would have been easier to wear than the clunky things we rented at the Chateau.

2) A bit light on restaurant recs, so you may want to research on [...]paris, [...], or other favorite chow review website, but for our needs, it was nice to have some direction than no direction at all.

3) I don't know how the lodging recs are since we were traveling on my friend's hotel points, but someone we ran into while at the Eiffel said that there are some lovely, affordable B&B's in the area which Rick Steves doesn't seem to have any advice on (just hotels, hostels, and apartments), so maybe worth researching elsewhere?

By the way, a funny thing happened on the way back to our hotel one night. While crossing the Place de la Concorde, we passed someone looking through HIS copy of Rick Steves' guide. Maybe other people had their guidebooks in their warm jackets, but that was the only one we saw actually IN USE by someone other than us!

I can't wait to return to Paris some day to check out the rest of the book I didn't get to visit this trip!

Rating :

Excellent travel guide

This is a great book with great information for people who aren't likely to go on guided tours but still want to get the benefit of the information. I also downloaded the Rick Steeves' podcasts from iTunes.

Rating :

Don't Leave Home Without It

Would never consider taking a European trip without consulting Rick Steves. Great look at all aspects of the trip from his unique - Back Door - approach. Coupled with Zagat's Restaurant Guide, this is all you need for a spectacular Paris experience. Walk and Metro are the key ways to see this city.

Rating :

Poorly organized, the worst of Steve's guides

If you know Paris well, Steve's "Paris" might be useful. Might. Only "might" because his recommendations are sorted by neighborhoods. Worse yet, some "neighborhoods," like the centrally located Opéra, are given short shrift. The entertainment/nightlife section/s are also skimpy. For once the "F" gides -- Fodor, Frommer -- and others are far better than Steve's; and such on-line guides as Virtual Tourist and Trip Advisor are also more informative and reliable. Steves's Paris is virtually worthless.

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1. ISBN13: 9781598802863
2. Condition: NEW
3. Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Editorial Review :

Customer Review :

Rick Steves Italy 2010

I have traveled to Italy many times. Every other year I purchase Rick's book on Italy, I always learn many new things. March will be my 33 trip so I know what I am talking about. experiment a little take a chance and travel if you can.

Rating :

Rick Steves knows Europe!

I mostly rely on various websites when I travel but I found Spain to be just too large to handle on my own; so last year, I decided to get Steves' Spain book. Now that I'm getting ready to explore Italy, I've once more turned to Steves' guide book. He offers the most valuable practical information at the fingertips of the ordinary traveler. I know now what to expect and I can't ask for more.

Rating :

the best guide book ever

Rick Steves is specific about what to see, where to stay and what you actually get, what not to miss and how to get to everything. Oh, and how much it will cost. I have used other Steves' guidebooks, and he is right on the money.

Rating :

Every American in Italy has this book!

We went to Italy in 2007 and had the corresponding Steve's guidebook...as did every other touron in Italy that fall. Don't get me wrong the guidebook was great but I sure felt like a dork sitting in a restaurant with 20 other people who all had the same guidebook. "Oh what does Rick say I should eat here?" Guidebooks are good for a general plan...but we used it a little too much "to the letter" and frankly the experience lost it's luster. "Oh, Rick says we should go look at this but gee... I'm not quite as thrilled as he said I should be!"

So in that sense maybe it was user error on my part. Travel should be about adventure, not canned experience IMHO, a guidebook should be bare bones or used as such. On our next trip I'll probably use a guidebook to lay out the general itinerary and leave it at home to add a little adventure.

With all that said it's a good book. The maps are accurate, the hotel advice was great as was the restaurant info and recommendation.

Rating :

Advice, Not Just Information

We are still planning our trip to Italy, but are finding this book to be the most valuable resource we have. It goes beyond lists of hotels and lists of restaurants. This book truly gives tips, advice, and 'how to'. It's given us the confidence to attempt this trip on our own.

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Editorial Review :

In this sequel to her New York Times bestsellers Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany, the celebrated "bard of Tuscany" (New York Times) lyrically chronicles her continuing, two decades-long love affair with Tuscany's people, art, cuisine, and lifestyle.
 
Frances Mayes offers her readers a deeply personal memoir of her present-day life in Tuscany, encompassing both the changes she has experienced since Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany appeared, and sensuous, evocative reflections on the timeless beauty and vivid pleasures of Italian life. Among the themes Mayes explores are how her experience of Tuscany dramatically expanded when she renovated and became a part-time resident of a 13th century house with a stone roof in the mountains above Cortona, how life in the mountains introduced her to a "wilder" side of Tuscany--and with it a lively  engagement with Tuscany's mountain people. Throughout, she reveals the concrete joys of life in her adopted hill town, with particular attention to life in the piazza, the art of Luca Signorelli (Renaissance painter from Cortona), and the pastoral pleasures of feasting from her garden.  Moving always toward a deeper engagement, Mayes writes of Tuscan icons that have become for her storehouses of memory, of crucible moments from which bigger ideas emerged, and of the writing life she has enjoyed in the room where Under the Tuscan Sun began.
 
With more on the pleasures of life at Bramasole, the delights and challenges of living in Italy day-to-day and favorite recipes, Every Day in Tuscany is a passionate and inviting account of the richness and complexity of Italian life.

Customer Review :

a meander thru a year in Italy

Loosely organized around the seasons, this book follows the author as works by favorite painters are visited, guests arrive, friends in town are met, festivals held, and the comforts of her adopted town of Cortona visited. Without giving the plot away, I can say that in one moving chapter Mayes fears for her acceptance in Cortona but discovers (or perhaps emerges) secure in the knowledge she is part of the town fabric. Instead of a focus on the project of buying and restoring a house, this book is more about conveying the experience of the author's life.

That all said, this wasn't a book I really enjoyed. In the best of expat books the pages melt away and I almost feel I am there looking over the authors' shoulder as the experiences unfold. But the sentence style in this book kept me from feeling immersed in her world. Adjectives must have been on sale when Mayes was writing, because almost every sentence was so liberally salted that they made the thought difficult to follow. Here is a typical sentence: "The cold iron clapper hitting the frozen bell produces clear, shocked, hard gongs that reverberate in the heads of us frozen ones in the piazza, ringing in our skulls and down to our heels, striking the paving stones." After a few pages of this *my* head was ringing.

Rating :

Lovely addition to the Tuscany collection by Frances Mayes

Frances Mayes, author of a series of books on her life in Tuscany, has penned another volume in the series. The newest, "Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life," is a charming account of her present-day life in Tuscany and her travels through Italy.

Mayes' home in Tuscany, Bramasole, was an abandoned thirteenth-century farmhouse in the mountains near Cortona that she renovated. She chronicles the seasons she and her husband spend in Italy, early spring through summer, ending with her return to her home in the U.S. in the late fall.

In this book, she and her husband branch out to explore Umbria and the Marche. She is on a quest for works of art by Luca Signorelli and his teacher, Piero della Francesca. Along the way, she meets the residents of the regions and manages to eat her way through the menus she encounters.

One of the delights repeated in this book is a series of recipes from the areas she visits. They sound so good that you are torn whether to continue read to read the book, or put it on the kitchen counter and cook the latest recipe she offers.

Whichever you decide to do, you will enjoy the fruits of this latest volume in Mayes' saga of Tuscany and its environs. It is a delight and a welcome diversion from the harsh realitites of life today.

Rating :

Tuscany Continued

Every Day in Tuscany continues the chronicles of Frances Mayes experiences surrounding Bramasole, the home in Cortona, Italy she acquired and has been restoring over the past twenty years.

If you enjoyed her book Under the Tuscan Sun you will find probably find this one a pleasure to read.

The book is often like a personal journal or diary, recording her thoughts about the people, plants, food and events of daily life in Tuscany.

A lot of the book is devoted to excursions to locate and view the art works of Luca Signorelli. She spends a lot of time describing the paintings, the subject matter and the location of his works. If you have a particular interest in Signorelli and his art work, then this book may provide some additional insight into his works. It does give you a good guide to the locations of many of his paintings.

Mayes shares some interesting stories about her life and her interaction with friends in and around her home. Food is such an important part of life for the Italians and she goes into great detail describing various meals. There are quite a few recipes in the book.

At times the book is a little disjointed. But if you would like to get an inside look at life in and around Tuscany, this will give you that. It captures her thoughts and feelings and she does a good job of painting a picture of life in Tuscany.




Rating :

Another year in Tuscany

I really enjoyed her first books so was expecting more of the same with this. Unfortunately this one is a bit different. The form of the book is just not the same.

There are loads and loads of recipes so that this is almost a cookbook rather than an expat experience book. Some of them sound quite tasty. There are also chapters of travelogue detailing the things you can see in a certain small town, which might be handy if one were passing through but the descriptions aren't totally interesting to read about since there aren't any pictures. This book would definitely be improved by pictures to go with the recipes and the icons and paintings and buildings which are described.

Anyone who is visiting Italy might enjoy it for ideas about things to see and dishes to eat. Those who have lived there might like it for the memories. It is a bit harder to get into for those of us who don't fall into either of those categories.


Rating :

Is it time yet?

Does an author write another book just because it's time? That is the impression I got from this new book by Frances Mayes. As with most people, I loved her first book, Under the Tuscan Sun. There was a real story there with a doubtful outcome. In reading this book, it felt as if some editor said to Mayes, "It's time to update your story and come out with a new book." More of the same basically. Yes, most of us would love to live the life of the author, spending part of the year in Tuscany and the rest here in the US. More scenes with good food, old friends, older buildings and scenery. I felt as if this was more of a travelogue, not a real book with a real plot. If you just want to bask in the scenery and the Italian way of life, then check out this book.

Rating :

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1. ISBN13: 9781598801880
2. Condition: NEW
3. Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Editorial Review :

Customer Review :

useful

I like that this book has phrases that you might not think that you will need. it categorizes phrases by subjects which helps when youre in a rush (food, greetings etc)

Rating :

Very helpful

This will be very helpful on my trip to Italy in April....altho I know Italian, there are some things I don't remember.....

Rating :

Italian phrase book

Was so well taken care of by tour director that I didnt need to use this book, but enjoyed reading it. Left it with tour director.

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Just love everything Rick Steves publishes!

Haven't been to italy since we bought this but reading it allevietes any fears of "language barriers". Looking forward to using it.

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Not that good

I'm going to have to break with other reviewers here, and give my less-than-stellar review of this book. We purchased this before we left for our European trip to Paris and 3 cities in Italy. We also purchased the French book by Steve's. Before we left we thought we'd found the perfect book with the perfect phrases, although they were harder to find due to the way he lays out the book. But after much research we settled on these books and were happy....until we had to use them in France and Italy. I quickly discovered that although the book had helped with pronunciation, almost none of the words we needed were in the dictionary in the back, nor could we find simple words or phrases in the proper sections of travel and dining, that we found in real life situations. This was very disappointing, first in France then in Italy. I quickly went to Google translator, put in all the phrases I needed but did not find in the book, and wrote them all down. This helped tremendously. I also searched for words that weren't in the dictionary and wrote them down, as well. Almost every night I did this as we encountered new circumstances that the book didn't have anything helpful for. Also, when you're in the moment and you need something, trying to find first the section which seems haphazardly placed in the book, then the area of the section where the phrases are located, then go down the list for the correct phrase, is time consuming of time you don't have, and frustrating when after all that time you don't find what you need. Meanwhile the person you're trying to speak to is just staring at you. Things worked much better when I whipped out my handwritten phrases and asked my direct question. Just remember that you probably won't understand what their answer is unless it's a simple yes or no.

After this trip my advise is to borrow basic language books from the library, type out what you need and get a good pocket dictionary if you need, something with substance which this dictionary is not. Use Google translator for the most used phrases you think you'll need and go from there. Save your money on this book.

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