This is a must read for all intellectuals.

This book is the story of my ancestor!! ^_____^ More exactly, it's the story of how he escaped the jail after being thrown in it for political reasons (he was against the government). He founded the first satyrical newspaper in France and was known as prince of this press...

This book is a classic tale, and quite enjoyable. The protagonist is a mountain guide, Isaïe, who has had some accidents in mountain climbing expeditions, nearly died in the last, and is terrified of going back up because he feels that the mountain has sent him a sign or warning. He now raises sheep, lives alone with his younger brother Marcellin (who is the family "black sheep," a thorougly lazy, unprincipled person), but whom Isaïe loves. People view him as having become a bit of a "simpleton," and it's true that he has become a lesser person since the accidents-- hasn't led expeditions or climbed for years. Then a plane crashes in snow and ice on the mountain, and shortly thereafter, the town's leading guide dies in a rescue mission. Although the view is that there are no survivors from the crash, Isaïe ends upconfronting his own worst fear--in leading his brother up that mountain. He knows Marcellin's motive is immoral: he wants to search the plane for gold, or money that can be picked off the bodies of the dead. Still Isaïe, who fears his brother would climb on his own and perish, goes up to safeguard him, and in so doing, finds something unexpected at the top.

This book is an essential work for psychiatrist, psychologist and pedagogus. The dialetic thought revolutioned the approach of human being psichic development and Henri Wallon is one of its highlights. Emotional intelligence, which is an up to date concept, has already being described by this author in the begining of our century, inside the description of practical and objective intelligences. The biological development doens't come to an end by birth time, but it is need to develop the body and its functions and it is in this context that the thought begins to play a role. As the author said in his book "De l'acte `a la pensee", word is more consequence than cause of development.

Took a while to get through this, in French, but well worth the effort. Ms. Blanche offers wonderful comparison and analysis. Would be great if translated as well!! Way to go Martine!

Castang meets Sabine Arthur when she comes to share her concern that something is wrong in her household. Sabine is an elderly widow who means well, but manages to be abrasive to everyone she meets. This talent has put her at odd with her son, and Sabine is afraid. Castang believes that she has something to be afraid of, but there isn't anything the police can do for her, since nothing had yet happened.

Her death finally allows Castang to take action, as her case becomes his first fully-fledged homicide inquiry.

One of the things that Freeling does best is explore the uncertainties and games that underlie middle-class European life. His look at the tiny French town of Soulay is a masterful example of this talent. One of the best Castang books (although I still prefer the Van Der Valk series).

The woman with her back to us might be Grace Kelly. It is an afternoon full of the languor of warmth. Minutes before, luncehon has ended and the air is spiced with aioli, lavender and Chanel. Just out of shot the last of the ice is cracking under the drained Dom Perignon. Thus from the sumptuous cover of this memorable family album we are invited by Jacques-Henri Lartigue into the conspiracy of fantasies that only the French Riviera accommodates. Lartigue's access was privileged. Born into wealth at the end of the nineteenth century, his natural stomping ground comprised the grands salons of the greatest hotels on earth - the Eden Roc at Antibes, the Negresco at Nice, the Gray d'Albion at Cannes. From these gilded terraces he dreamed of being a painter, while the Hispano-Suiza cooled at the kerb. Like Bonnard and Matisse before him it was the light that enmeshed him, and from the age of eight, when he received his first wood-frame camera, he was experimenting with color and form in the manner of the modernists. But Edenic Riviera life offers attractions which, in volume and variety, can become distractions. Perhaps this explains the paucity of international coverage of Lartigue's growth before the middle sixties, and the failure of his measure alongside Blumenfeld and Man Ray. A born adventurer and bon vivant, he courted the Riviera's copious delights - in company of Abel Gance, Maurice Chevalier, Colette, Chagall - with a dionysian abandon that may have undercut his work. But the work is what it boils down to, and the sample presented here, compressed from the 130 albums and 100,000 negatives he presented for conservation to the French government in the late 70s, displays a genius as emblematic of midi magic as Matisse. Unlike Brassai, Lartigue was working till the end of his long life. As he approached his nineties he commenced a dramatic series of light impressions entitled "As Long as I Still Have a Shadow". These (glimpsed here) perhaps best express the intangible beauty of a blue day at Cannes, and the abiding value of Lartigue.

This book, Le bruit solitaire du coeur, dedicated to Henri Troyat's father, is really quite wonderful. The author catches with tremendous sensitivity and humanity the life of an elderly man (93 years old)--an emigré from Russia at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution, who ends up shipwrecked (metaphorically) in Paris. It is an unheroic book--unlike La neige en deuil, another favorite of mine by Troyat--but every bit as good. Troyat's protagonist, Igor Dmitrievitch Lébédev, is a man, torn between two worlds--the one of his past (the Russia that is dead, and many of the people he knew in it, along with his beloved wife, Hélène), and the shrinking world of his living, as memories of the past capture and possess. The book is without the external adventure, i.e., mountain-climbing, of the other excellent book referenced above. At times I see my own Father, also a Russian emigré, in Troyat's protagonist, Igor Dmitrievitch Lébédev, and both of their journeys through old age, memory, and illness. If play of mind and the humdrum of daily existence is essentially the offered fare here, it is, through the richness and beauty of the author's perceptions and the depth of his own humanity, more than enough!

This book is probably one of my all time favorite reads. It's a classic in France and read mainly by younger adults/children. The story is seen from a young boys point of view and encompasses all the delights of a fairytale, from secret countryside and villages to strange travelling people and magic and romance. It is a must for anyone who like myself, dreams of forgotten hours of childhood wandering aimlessly in strange places and forgetting where you are.

I came upon this title in 2000 while working on a project in Provence .... . A friend suggested that I try this book, even though Bosco is not heavily identified with provencal literature in the same way as Giono, Pagnol and Daudet. It's a "little" story. Not a whole lot happens, yet Bosco manages a high degree of suspense, in addition to some fine character development. You don't meet many people, and you don't go many places. In thumbnail form, the novel is about some remote farms in Provence [the word "Mas" means farm in provencal], lying far from the nearest village, and the interactions between the owners and tenant farmers who work the land. Most of the book happens right on these fields and hillsides. Family history plays a part in the plot. Romance and foul play are central to the plot, but this is not a thriller or a romance novel!! It's quieter than that, slower, more subtle.

Bosco's imagery is less intense than Giono's but equally descriptive of the landscape. Forgive the analogy, but if Giono writes the way van Gogh painted, Bosco is more like Corot. I found myself increasingly drawn into this long-ago world via his descriptions of buildings, weather, seasons, clothing, people. I learned a great deal about how country people lived a century ago, how they treated one another, celebrated marriages and funerals, etc. If you happen to know the Italian film "Tree of Wooden Clogs" you'll be able to imagine the cultural riches that await you in "Le Mas Theotime."

On rare occasions, I read a book and find myself so completely and perfectly satisfied at the end, I cannot bear to start another book. Just want to exist for a time, held in the magic of the work just finished. After two years I am still filled with the quiet beauty of it. A wonderful experience.