Today is the first Saturday in April, the month I most associate with Paris. I’m sure it’s at least partly because the Cole Porter song “I love Paris in the springtime” has wended its way into our culture, it’s but also because my vacation in Paris several years ago took place during April. There were daffodils and tulips in bloom (ironically, many more so than when I went to Amsterdam several springs later), trees were starting to bud in that pale green we associate with the earliest moments of spring and somehow the city was decked out in primrose with a concerted effort usually put into action in Disney parks.

I’ve written about my love of Paris before on the blog and those who know me well (and even some who only know me a little), are well acquainted with my fondness for the city. What often surprises most people is that I’ve physically visited Paris just once.  This isn’t to say that I won’t find my way back there, hopefully many times over the course of my life, but my admiration has stemmed from more than just my limited in-person experience. In a way, I feel like I’ve been to Paris dozens of times, mostly through books.

I’m addicted to travel memoirs; I find that few other reads can take me away quite like living vicariously through someone else’s experiences, wherever they may be. Naturally, I’ve read several books in this vein about Paris that make me feel like I’ve traveled there myself. The best thing about books like these is that they can make you feel like you’ve transcended both time and space. Reading
Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare and Co., took me not only to Paris, but to the 1920s as well. I spent Christmas with a family in Paris by reading A Paris Christmas: Immoveable Feast by John Baxter. I enjoyed lunch, romance and the desire to uproot and move to Paris in Lunch in Paris by Elizabeth Bard. Emile Zola took me into the Belly of Paris in the late 1800s and Clotilde Dusoulier brought me into the modern belly of Paris in Chocolate and Zucchini.

My appetite for Paris never seems to diminish and fortunately, neither have people’s appetite for writing about this city. My Goodreads list is filled with books about Paris that I haven’t read yet, but I’m looking to change that. This month, I’m planning on making a dent in that list and make April my month of Parisian reading. In case you’d like to read along with me, here are a few books that I’m hoping to enjoy in the coming weeks:

Five Nights in Paris: After Dark in the City of Light by John Baxter 

Native Australian John Baxter has lived in Paris with his French wife since 1989 and has written several books on the topic. I mentioned his Immoveable Feast above which was delightful and while I’m not immediately jumping into his more popular work The Most Beautiful Walk in the World, I still expect to enjoy this as Baxter wanders through five iconic Parisian neighborhoods during a time when most tourists are asleep. Books like this are always intriguing to me because they seem to invoke the sense of everyday life, not the romance of a whirlwind vacation, while still managing  to find beauty and excitement.

Clotilde’s Edible Adventures in Paris by Clotilde Dusoulier

Blogger Dusoulier has written several books about Parisian food and the discoveries she’s found. A native Frenchwoman, she knows her way around the Paris markets and, fortunately for us, is happy to share what she’s learned in her local travels. Her books are complete with recipes so that readers can create their own little part of Paris in their kitchens.

The Little Paris Bookshop by Nine George

How can I possibly resist a book that puts books and Paris (two of my favorite things!) together? Monsieur Perdu appears to have an innate sense of bibliotherapy, as he prescribes books for visitors to his floating Seine bookstore with a sense of exactly what they need at that moment. This is a fiction book, but I firmly believe that fiction can be every bit as transportive as non-ficiton, and this book seems to have a solid sense of what makes Paris, Paris.

The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade that Gave the World Impressionism by Ross King

I’m a bit obsessed with Impressionism and the paintings that were the result of that movement and I took great pleasure in visiting as  many museums that had great Impressionism collections as possible. This book puts that movement into historical perspective as King discusses the upheaval that was taking place in Paris during the decade when Impressionism was beginning to gain ground as a movement. Using the Salon des Refuses in 1863, the scandalous exhibition of the Paris Salon “rejects” and the first Impressionist showing in 1974 as benchmarks to explore the time when Paris was the center of the world for art and revolution.

Till next week, dear readers, whether it’s Paris or some other wonderful, fascinating destination, I wish you wonderful bookish travels, be the in person or on the page!