THE PARIS LETTER: London

Hello from sunny Paris, where we are lying in bed and eating baguettes -

Yes, it is a LAZY sunday today, while we wait for our friend Dave to arrive on his stopover from Portland to Malawi. Some people have really exotic lives, you know?

I spent most of the week in London shopping attending the London Book Fair, an annual glitzy and glamorous international publishing conference. No, really its like a trade show for books, held in a big conference center, where agents and publishers from all over the world come to make rights deals - and a bunch of other stuff happens, like I think book buyers from libraries and bookstores might also be there? And then all the residual publishing businesses like printers, e-book retailers, merchandisers, etc. But I really spend most of my time on the international rights deals side of things, which means in the IRC, or international rights center. This is a huge open floor that looks either like an open plan office or a series of poker tables in a giant casino, where agents and publishers have half hour meetings all day to sell and promote their titles.

THE PARIS LETTER: Bagels & Regret

Hello everyone -
It's a beautiful spring day here in Paris, almost impossible not to be outside - unless you're like me, with my terrible spring allergies...which apparently are even worse this year as I get used to the new European pollens. However, I did just hit the pharmacie and loaded up on medicines, so hopefully I'll be out there drinking at an outdoor cafe soon enough -

This week was a pretty quiet one, but Friday marked the beginning of French spring break, another 2 week school holiday that runs through Easter weekend - I'm off from the Sorbonne for those two weeks, and we have some good upcoming travel - I'll be in London this week at the London Book Fair, and happily catching up with some New York and London friends, and then Easter weekend Matt and I will be in Helsinki, Finland, and I'm sure we'll have lots to report from there -

BAGELS
Strangely, here in the land of the croissant, I've been craving a good bagel and cream cheese lately, and wow are they actually hard to find. I may have mentioned before that there's a bagel craze that's been sweeping Paris - I guess its been around for a few years at this point - and there are a few restaurants here that claim to be "New York style" bagel bars - But, there are very few places where you can find bagels to buy and eat at home. I made a pilgrimage the other day, walking all around the Marais looking for bagel shops (I had heard a rumor that there was a place in the Marais where you could buy frozen H&H bagels from New York, but it has since CLOSED, boo)

THE PARIS LETTER: French Top Chef and Venice Tips

Hello everyone -

So, today we will be talking about the curious and long-standing rivalry between the Brits and the French, as seen through the lens of the French version of the TV show TOP CHEF.

I know you have all probably read about how England and France hate each other, about hundreds of years of wars that occurred between these two countries, how Brittany & Normandy were occupied by thethe English for much of history, how deposed British royalty often made a home in Paris only to join up with the French to plot an invasion that inevitably failed, etc etc. Yes, these countries DO NOT like each other. It is VERY different than dislike/fascination that thethe French and Americans feel for one another. At the end of the day, French are both ANNOYED by thethe US and are FASCINATED by us - perhaps the way an uncle might be both annoyed by how much his nephew texts his friend on his iPad, but fascinated by how he manages to do all that new-fangled stuff on it. We are young upstarts, rude and uncouth but also innovators and full of energy, and this is both interesting and irritating to the French. However, with the Brits its more like deep seated sibling rivalry that is NEVER going away - both cultures have been around equally long, both enjoyed world dominance, both have significant cultural capitals - let's face it, they're basically EQUAL in terms of power, but they're still always gonna compete for who's the best in some kind of futile fight to the death.