Chapter 1 - New Year, New Books!

Happy New Year friends! I hope everyone had a terrific holiday, whatever you celebrate (take your pick there are 14 various holidays in December). After just spending a few weeks in France, I am very excited to be back and telling you about all the great books I've read lately.

Our first week in France was in Honfleur on the Normandy coast. This has become a favorite place of ours and in December we took one of our granddaughters with us to show her the sites and sights. Normandy is the site, of course, of the D-Day landings in 1944 which was the beginning of the end of World War II. We went to museums and the beaches so our granddaughter, McKenna, had a better understanding of the enormity of the invasion. I always tend to read books, either fiction or nonfiction, about where we are going so my two reads for this particular trip were The Librarian of Saint-Malo by Mario Escobar and Against All Odds by Alex Kershaw. The first was a novel, based on a true story, about a librarian protecting the valuable books in the Saint-Malo library. The nonfiction book by Alex Kershaw was about four of the most decorated American men during World War II. I had read his book The First Wave a few years back when we originally went to Normandy and I find that his books read like novels.

While in Normandy we went to Rouen, saw the Cathedral, and ate at La Coronne the restaurant which gave Julia Child the idea of learning to cook French. She highlights this meal in her book My Life in France, co-written with her nephew Paul Prudhomme.

The best laid plans of mice and men, however, had McKenna staying with us an extra day before she went home. While she just wanted to get back to her life in New Hampshire, we considered it a bonus for us. We took the opportunity to go to Reims and the the Museum of the Surrender where Allied and German officers signed the agreement to cease hostilities with the unconditional surrender of the Germans. (Unconditional Surrender by Paul Zigo is a good book about this.)

After Reims and seeing McKenna off to CDG, Dave and I took off for Strasbourg, the self-proclaimed Capital of Christmas. As it turned out the apartment we rented was right across from the Catherale de Notre Dame - the second most visited church in France. We had no idea that the whole city was a Christmas Market and so it was with tons of food, drink, artisan goods, and people, people, people. Note to self, stay away from the Cathedral on Christmas Eve and Christmas unless you really enjoy the sound of church bells ringing constantly!

As I had no specific book in mind for Strasbourg I read The Trials of Mrs. Rhinelander by Denny S. Bryce. Denny Bryce will be one of the authors at the Savannah Book Festival in February. The novel is a fictionalized account of the true story of Alice Jones Rhinelander, a mulatto women who marries the heir to a fortune in 1920's New York. His family (blue blood New Yorkers) are so threatened to have her in the family that they force Alice's husband, Lenny to apply for an annulment and so the fight begins.

I did pick up a Hercule Poirot book by Agatha Christie (in French) for our journey home. Instead I read A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende. She is always a favorite!

So what did you read over the holidays? Let me know.