la lecture

I don't know about you, but I believe one of the best things about going to France is THE BOOKS.* And behold my haul.

As you can see I was quite reserved, really. I shopped in Bordeaux at an enormous (absolutely staggeringly big) bookshop (i got lost once) called Mollat, in Les Enfants sur le Toit, a children's bookstore in Montmartre, and at Chantelivre in the 6th arrondissement.
  

• Cupidon Power by Luc Blanvillain, published by l'école des loisirs (MG), in which a young boy has the magical ability to make people fall in love with each other – but he can't benefit from it himself.

• Dysfonctionelle by Axl Cendres, published by Editions Sarbacane (YA). Fidèle has a pretty crappy home life – Dad back and forth from prison, Mum from the psych ward – but she's clever, and so goes to a posh school in a nice suburb. I'll take a torn-between-two-worlds story ANYDAY.

• La pyramide des besions humains by Caroline Solé, published by l'école des loisirs (YA). This one was recommended to me by Coline Ribue, a publicist at l'école des loisirs who was kind enough to meet with me and chat all things book – answering all of my questions about how 'surely france respects books above all else' and hearing back that actually, like here, kids books get pretty overlooked in terms of reviews in mainstream media ...more about this another time – and she walked me around Chantelivre, the indie bookshop right next door to the office. This YA novel is about a reality TV show based on the idea of Marlow's hierarchy of needs. I'm going to have to read it to understand more...

• Quand le diable sortit de la salle de bain by Sophie Divry, published by Notabilia (adult fic) about a young woman, unemployed and bogged down in her novel. I try not to think about this one being too close to home. Sophie, the character, has a personal demon called Lorchus, so we're different that way.

• C'est chic! by Marie Dorléans, published by Seuil Jeunesse (picture book). It's about a merchant who can't shift his wares, until one day he gets a touch of heatstroke and begins pitching very strange goods: coffee shoes and rain carpets?? And the snobbity rich folks, well they think these things are just so unique!

A closer look at all things chic...

Isn't it magnificent?

• Le merveilleux dodu-velu-petit by Beatrice Alemagna, published by Albin Michel Jeunesse (picture book) and which is about a little girl who just wants to get the best present for her mother's birthday – better that anything her sister could get...

 I couldn't not buy the Beatrice Alemagna, even though she's pretty often translated into English – and this title is already, it's called The Wonderful Fluffy Little Squishy – but I had read an article about this one last year, in which Beatrice was asked (I believe) to redraw a scene in which a butcher brandishes a bloody, dripping knife at our little main character Eddie. American sensibilities etc. I don't know if she had to censor it in the end, but I know I wanted the bloody knife version for myself.

I'm excited, though a little overwhelmed, at all the reading-in-a-second-language I'm about to do. I'm trying to improve my French from basic-conversation-fluent to something a little more nuanced and sophisticated. Books is the answer, I think.

Do you read in foreign languages? How do you source your books? Do you feel, like me, that we would all benefit from an increased amount of works translated from other languages in this country? How can we make this an affordable process?


 *croissants, baguettes and rocamadour cheese obviously a close, tied, second-best.

has it really been a year?

january 2015. the girl is a full-time editor again. she walks the docklands trudge; walks saltwater sandals beside the bankers.

the people are kind, interesting, creative, friendly, very tall. mothers of punk singers. mentors, inspirations, enthusiastic, passionate, helpful.

Find Me A Castle by Beci Orpin

the girl is given the most incredible projects to work on. there are more people to meet: busy, successful arty people who work really hard doing what they love. (beci must not sleep, i think.)

Ickypedia by The Listies

there are hilarious loose cannon first-time authors to work with, who write clever, disgusting things and are very good at puns and drawing queues. (‘pub date?’ they ask. ‘which pub shall we go to?’)

Celebrating 30 years of Paul Jennings!!

there are the authors who’ve been around for yonks, been your childhood favourites. this, this was pretty damn special. have you read ‘a dozen bloomin’ roses’ lately? or ‘skeleton on the dunny’, ‘nails’ or ‘cow dung custard’? have you ever, ever felt like this?

coffee by long shot, mostly. and bonus grammar fun with mary norris! (seen at the interrobang & you can listen to the podcast of the event.) many excellent books over the year. some writing (more on that later). lots of changes, lots of learning. lots of fortunate moments (hashtag blessed).

december 2015. the girl will wrap up her job at the end of january and bid farewell to the random penguins. elle va aller en france pour se détendre et ... 

révolution, je t'aime

Today is forty-three years since the Nuit des Barricades – the Night of the Barricades – when the student-turned-general protests in France, May 1968 came to a violent climax. The protesters dug up cobblestones in the Latin Quarter, threw Molotov Cocktails, set fire to cars and barricades themselves on the street. They were sick of a dated university curriculum, sick of not having a voice and ready (like youth all around the world) for a new government, a new outlook for their evolving post-war world.

The poetic rhetoric of the May ’68 movement captured the idealistic fervour of the protesting youth and has remained one of its greatest strengths. Influenced by the Situationists (in turn influenced by Dadaism and Surrealism) they pasted posters and graffiti all around Paris, writing memorable slogans that have been reused and pastiched in French protest ever since.

The evolution of the slogans is clear as the movement progressed from mere discontent on campus to a wider attack on society as a whole. At the suburban university campus of Nanterre (where the problems escalated around the time Daniel Cohn-Bendit compared the French government to Hitler Youth) the students cried ‘Professors, you are old!’ Also evident in the slogans is an awareness of language and the strength of language as a tool of dissent. The posters and newspapers provide a visual representation of the rhetoric and language of the 1968 uprisings.

Other images also use the creative distortion of French linguistic formations. This slogan is making fun of the verb conjugation exercises that would have been learnt at school, but adds a very cynical edge. Translated, it means: I participate, you (singular) participate, he participates, we participate, you (plural) participate, they profit.

Another favourite is: L’anarchie, c’est je (‘Anarchy is I’). The use of incorrect grammar symbolises the disregard for the conventions of even the most basic element of French culture.

The students, rebelling against the old – the conservative education and the old man who ran their country – were also rebelling against the old ideas of literature and poetry. Rather than in the old books in the library, la poésie est dans la rue – poetry is in the street! The slogans scrawled as graffiti around Paris “were full of popular wit, but also…had a surrealist tone, symbolised in the assertion that ‘imagination has seized power.’”*

Using words and phrases to fight against the old social order, the students created an atmosphere of possibility: Rêve + évolution = révolution (‘Dream + evolution = revolution’).

Given that it's also Australian Federal Budget Day today, it's the perfect time to get some enthusiastic idealism into you!

To write this post I just smooshed together notes I made while writing my honours thesis. Apologies for the undergraduate hyperbole.

*from Daniel Singer's excellent book Prelude to Revolution.

If you want to read about 1968 in general (because it was a very exciting year all around this globe), look no further than Mark Kurlansky's excellent book entitled 1968: The Year that Rocked the World.

in honour of paris

*pere lachaise cemetery, view from the top of the butte de montmartre, view from la tour eiffel, 'my' flat in montmartre (with the flowers...actually my friend's place).

review : anna and the french kiss

Anna and the French Kiss, Stephanie Perkins (Penguin)

This one is a love story: a kind of soppy teen romance, with a little edge of snark and genuine, occasionally laugh-out-loud, humour that saves it from being too cheesy.

Anna has been plonked in an American boarding school in Paris, France for her senior year (quite academically irresponsible of her father, I think ) and because she doesn’t speak French, has never been overseas before and is away from her mother and little brother for the first time, she’s understandably shitting herself.

But never fear! A smart and quirky bunch of friends take her under their wings immediately and within hours she is thrust into the company of the gorgeous (we’re told over and over again), charming – although short – Etienne St Clair. Anna and St Clair gel immediately, but his longtime girlfriend Ellie (it’s ok, we’re told early on she’s kind of plain) stands in the way of anything happening between the two. Maybe.

Anna is funny and her awkwardness at being in this new place, unable to understand or even communicate with most people she meets, comes across very well. She has a great sense of playfulness (loved the Nutella moustache) and while her misreading of looks and situations was at times frustrating, it was also mostly believable and moved the plot forwards. The dialogue is great and Anna’s thoughts and her overanalysing of situations (within the scene, between dialogue) was hilarious, very real and a great strength of this novel. Her interest in films is great and her desire to be a film critic is a nice kooky touch - I hope she saw some French films in there and not just American ones.

Etienne St Clair is allegedly a French-American boy who grew up in London and all the girls swoon over his ‘British’ accent and he’s all proper and posh but on occasions it comes across as though he speaks (me mum, different die-rections) like he’s from Liverpool, or competing in a talk-like-Jim-Sturgess-in-Across-the-Universe contest. Inconsistent! And one other thing: British? It’s not an accent.

St Clair's interest in history and facts is great and interesting and the banter between the two is gorgeous. I would have liked more made of his relationship with his parents because as it is I don’t quite buy it, the father needed to be developed much more. I was also a little miffed that St Clair fought some of Anna's battles for her, when she did prove capable of doing it for herself at other times.

The book gives a very cute view of Paris, even though it doesn’t extend far past the cliché. Notre Dame, Père Lachaise, Shakespeare and Co. etc – it’s all in every guidebook. But it’s still lovely to watch Anna adapt to life in a foreign country and her character develop as her confidence grows. Her trip back to America and return to France are particularly interesting, in terms of Anna's broadening world view and also highlighting how she has changed as a result of living abroad.

I admit that I got my cynic on before reading this because it seems like everyone on the interwebs lovelovedloved it, but in spite of my dislike for Sofia Coppola and the fact that I feel like I'm surely the only foreigner that Paris likes - it was a great read. Ultimately this one is a lovely, sweet, romantic summer read (with a terrible, terrible cover) and should inspire everyone to travel to Paris.

hard-boiled inception

been to see inception tonight. i really liked it. very fun, suspenseful and enjoyable. i loved the paris scenes, i really liked the special effects (and i am not a special effects fan in general) and i especially loved the collective response at the end by the entire cinema. won't spoil it for those who haven't seen it yet...but those who have probably experienced the same thing.


i will certainly be v soon re-reading haruki murakami's hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world. surely the inspiration for the film?! i love murakami (and this one, along with a wild sheep chase, is my favourite) and maybe the popularity of this movie will introduce even more people to him. i don't know, though, how many people are noting the similarity. a quick google search suggests some are.

i bought my copy of hard-boiled wonderland at shakespeare and company in paris. i do like this shop even though it's flooded with hipsters and poseur-tramps and i wish i had been around when ginsberg was there, or anaïs nin...or even back before that in its real and original version with sylvia beach when she published joyce's ulysses and movable feasts were attended by fitzgerald and gertrude stein and, of course, hemingway (and ezra pound, whose poems i like, though he was a fascist).

i am sure to have very strange dreams tonight.

oscar wilde's tomb

i took these photos at the pere lachaise cemetery in paris, 2006. i went back and visited oscar again in 2008. (he hadn't changed)