Hooked on books

Gary and Maya have put together a list of books, including some fiction titles, for those lucky customers going to France for their holidays. In the age of awareness of global warming, it seems that France is once again becoming the premier holiday destination as people choose to ‘let the train take the strain’ instead of the plane.

• William Black, Plats Du Jour, nf
• Terry Darlington, Narrow Dog to Carcassonne, nf
• Stephen Downes, Paris on a Plate: A Gastronomic Diary, nf
• F Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night
• Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
• Christine & Dennis Graf, Cafe Life Paris, nf
• Joanne Harris, Five Quarters of the Orange
• Andrew Hussey, Paris: The Secret History, nf
• Jeremy Mercer, Books, Baguettes and Bedbugs, nf
• Kate Muir, Left Bank
• Helena Frith Powell, Two Lipsticks and a Lover
• Francoise Sagan, Bonjour Tristesse
• Georges Simenon, The Bar on the Seine
• Edmund White, The Flaneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris, nf
• Richard WIles, Bonne Chance!: Building a Life in Rural France, nf
• Des Woodland, Yellow Jersey Companion to the Tour De France, nf

And the essential guides you’ll need:

• AA Road Atlas France 2007 (spiral bound), nf
• Berlitz French Pocket Dictionary, nf
• Collins Road Atlas France 2007, nf
• Lonely Planet French Phrasebook, nf
• Taschen/ Vincent Knapp (photo.) Paris Hotels and More, nf

If you notice there’s no Michelin guides listed above then that is because as every bookseller knows, there are more customer complaints about inaccuracies than from any other map and travel guide publisher. We continue to sell Michelin guides because there are customers who retain a sense of loyalty to this brand. As an example of how poorly-updated Michelin mapping remains, one customer came to us to replace his Michelin Millenium Edition European Road Atlas. As the owner of a haulage company, he needed to know the height of bridges, speed and weight limits on main roads etc to plan routes for his drivers. He said: “Look at this!” The roads crossing the border from Germany into Poland are unchanged from an atlas seven years old and yet both nations have in those years, laid an extensive motorway system between their cities. The AA and Collins Road Atlases show these developments, the Michelin does not.