Dead Famous - holiday book review

On holiday again (hurrah) and once again I’m enjoying the opportunity to relax and read some books.

This time from the bookshelf I’ve enjoyed reading one of Ben Elton’s books, Dead Famous.

With more than a little nod of inspiration to the ‘Big Brother’ phenomenon, ten contestants are locked up in House Arrest where their every action is scrutinised day and night by ‘Peeping Tom’ with thirty cameras and forty microphones and the inevitable confessional box. There’s the usual petty arguments, stupid tasks for the inmates to do, and weekly eviction nominations and public vote.

So far so very much like the TV show.

Things take a dramatic twist though when one of the contestants is gruesomely murdered and despite all the surveillance cameras, no-one can work out "who dunnit". Cue the start of a great murder mystery story with the grumpy detective forced to watch hours and hours of archive footage to try to find out a motive for what happened and trying to piece together the clues. With all the possible suspects locked together inside the Peeping Tom house it should be simples to find a motive and method for the crime. Of course it's not as simple as that, maybe someone from outside wanted to do the murder (but how?) and it seems that in the few short weeks they've been locked together everyone has a motive for wanting their fellow contestants dead.

The story flashes backwards and forwards between the ongoing police investigation and what happened previously in the house and one by one the house inmates are investigated as the finger of suspicion turns on each of them in turn. The story ends (perhaps slightly cornily) with a 'showdown' of the police detective collecting all the suspects together and revealing who didn't do the crime, and then ergo who did do the dirty deed. Although a contrived mechanism of revealing the final clues to the story, Elton does so with unashamed flair and whilst I did manage to work out pretty much who was the guilty party there still a few surprises thrown in that made it an enjoyable read.

Dead Famous is available from Amazon for £7.99 as are lots of other novels by Ben Elton.

Enjoy (or come and stay in our Brittany Gite and you can read my copy that's on the bookshelf) !

French Lessons by George East - book review

The seasonal holiday period has given me some time off work and for once the opportunity to sit down and read a good book.

And so would I consider George East's latest book, French Lessons, to be a 'good book' or not?

An interesting question, and not one I think I have a definitive answer for. I've read all of George East's previous stories of moving to France, and if you've followed the story so far you'll be interested (like I was) in the latest up's and down's of George and his long-suffering wife Donella.

The previous book (French Kisses) saw our hero forced into desperate financial times and having to sell the Mill of the Flea in order to clear his debts, only to take on new and even more massive debts with a large manor-house on the Normandy marshes with extravagant plans to turn it into a B&B, one of the barns into a pub, and to make their fortune in the land that they now both love.

Unfortunately things don't turn out as expected and George begins to doubt the wisdom of the purchase as they "discover" that the neighbours have a large set of kennels that abut their land (how anyone could miss it when viewing the property is somewhat surprising, but George apparently did), and the howling of the hounds every morning is going to reduce the popularity of the future B&B business.

George tries to improve Anglo-French relationships between two nearby pubs with his own self-styled French lessons to the other British ex-Pats, and English lessons and cuisine to the French locals - with predictable results, but before long he's taken on the idea of opening the first in a massive chain of Anglo-pubs that will span the length of France ... only he's decided not to tell Donella of his latest venture ...

The book itself I felt marked a difference in writing style, whereas the first few books in the Mill of the Flea series had real moments of comic hilarity that I was chuckling at for days afterwards, these more recent books, and certainly French Lessons takes on a more introspective style. Quite a few bits of the story give more of an insight to George's views and feelings, how he feels guilty in letting Donella down with his lack of financial stability and the continued money worries they have, how the new book (i.e. this book) just won't seem to get written and how both he and Donella care deeply about the countryside they inhabit.

There continues to be little stories of the East's life in France such as the thread of how he starts to befriend a local wild fox by throwing it scraps of bacon across the riverbank during George's night-time walks, and over time how the fox starts to become slightly less wary of him; only to be rudely reminded of the natural order of the countryside when the fox breaks into their chicken shed one night and does what foxes do naturally with the chickens.

There's also wry and insightful looks at the fellow inhabitants of Northern rural France, both the French and the British ex-pat invaders like the couple with the phantom Gite that doesn't exist (read the book to understand the full story) and the synchronised chain-smoking regulars propping up the bar.

Unfortunately I personally found that the rib-tickling laugh-out-loud humour that was present in the early books such as Home and Dry in France, French Flea Bites or Rene and Me wasn't there in this book, there were plenty of crazy situations that George gets himself into (and not entirely *all* of his own making), there were plenty of witty anecdotes and observations, and I enjoyed reading it, I just didn't find it quite as funny as earlier books.
Perhaps I am getting immune to the excellent writing style, perhaps it just wasn't as funny, or perhaps I am turning into a boring sad old something as I get older?
No rude suggestions as to which please !

I won't spoil the story but there's surprises in the last chapter; the almost-ending turned out to be much as I thought it would be, but the very ending was quite a surprise and marks a definite change of track for the couple.

Anyway, to sum up, French Lessons is a pleasant and enjoyable recommended Christmas read.

A Place in France, an Indian Summer - Book Review

A Place in France

One of the advantages of having been away on holiday was that I actually got some 'me' time to sit down and enjoy a book (or two).

Of course I just had to find a France-related book, ending up with Nigel Farrell's 'A Place In France - An Indian Summer' which I thoroughly enjoyed.

A few years ago I watched the original Channel 4 series "A Place in the Sun" which follows the up's and down's (and frequently argumentative down's) of Nigel Farrell and Nippi Singh as they try to find and buy a holiday home in France.

The pair eventually settling on a small hamlet in the Ardeche region of Southern France. Nigel and Nippi eventually did find a house they both liked but which required an enormous amount of work to make habitable. The fact that they ever got there in the end was a testament to the builder's determination more than Nigel and Nippi's as they seemed to flap from one set of problems to the next.

By the end of the series though 40-something year old divorcee Nigel had fallen in love with Celine, a young French single parent who worked in the nearby bank, and had decided to try to live full time in France.

And so to the second series from Channel 4 which follows Nigel trying to start his new life in France. And of course if you're going to live somewhere you need an income, so Nigel hits on the usual and different 'big idea' to open and run an Indian Restaurant in the Ardeche region, despite having had no prior experience of working in a restaurant at all !

The book follows extracts from Nigel's diary for a year from having the original restaurant idea through to the winter after the restaurant opened. Having enjoyed watching the TV series I initially thought that the book wouldn't add anything, but having now read it I've been proven wrong as the book gives a far better personal insight into the actual story and shows more of Nigel's own relationship with the lovely Celine. Although the TV series follows the popular 'fly on the wall' documentary format, the way the story's been edited to keep the viewer interested and ensure cliff-hanger endings to each episode does result in Nigel appearing to be a bit of a fool.

Nigel's sunny optimism that the Indian restaurant idea is a sure-fire winner takes a battering when Nippi refuses to invest in the business and so Nigel is forced to find a new business partner, which he eventually does by joining up with the outrageously camp and excitable Reza Mahammad who already runs a successful Indian restaurant in London. Nigel certainly struck gold with Rezza and together the pair battle through trying to find a location for the restaurant, finding an Indian chef, decorating and equipping the restaurant and sorting through the inevitable French red-tape and bureaucracy.

There's a delightful part of the story that recounts how Nigel fails to tackle registering the business with the local Chamber of Commerce - without which he can't trade, pay bills to suppliers or even take card payments from customers. Nigel ignores the task until the very last minute before the restaurant opens and then has to scramble around trying to get copies of his UK birth certificate and UK divorce certificate ... and then is told that they're not acceptable because they need to be translated into French! I'll leave you to read the book to find out how he gets round this particular problem (spoiler is that it's on page 211).

Nigel is particularly outraged (and rightly so) when Nippi waltzes in towards the end and tries to take credit for the restaurant concept, but once the squabble was over Nippi assists the duo with publicity and by brilliantly suggesting getting hold of an Elephant to help promote the restaurant's opening night.

Reza contributes occasionally to the story with his own little diary 'interjections' and it's clear that he thinks Nigel's 'big idea' is as mad as a box of frogs, but he'll go along with the idea "because it's fun, darlings!".

I wouldn't say that this book isn't written as a "roll around on the floor, laughing" story (unlike, say, George East's tales of life in France), but it's well written and easy to read and good holiday reading material.

Only £5.99 (RRP £7.99) from Amazon.

C'est La Folie - Book Review

C'est La Folie

Amazingly despite seemingly working all hours possible I have actually found enough 'me' time to read a book. Normally I only get such luxuries when on holiday so perhaps I'm finally learning to manage my work/life balance or is that my work/work/work/life balance?

Anyway, onto the book review.

On reaching his thirties Michael Wright decides that there's more to life than his job as a theatre critic and together with his long suffering cat sets off moving from his comfortable existence in South London to start a new altogether grittier life in rural France.

Michael plumps on moving to Limousin on the basis that it's far enough South that the cat'll notice the improvement in the weather and yet close enough to England that he can pop back to see his parents from time to time. Nearness to an Aerodrome is also an essential pre-requisite because Michael's also got to bring his aircraft, a yellow 1946 Luscombe Silvaire, over to France and his tale of searching to find a local aerodrome in the rain sets the tone with a wry sense of humour for the rest of the book:

The barman's moustache twitches as he slides a smoking coffee towards me.
'Il n'y a pas d'aerodrome ici, Monsieur.' He rolls his eyes at the other men in the bar as I repeat a scenario I have played out in countless bars and tabacs all over France, where aerodrome denial is rife.
'But what's this?' I ask, pointing to the little star beside the name Jolibois on my aeronautical chart.
'Ah, you mean the landing-strip that the pilots use?' he huffs, sulkily polishing a glass.
I nod.
'Well, why didn't you say so Monsieur?' he says. 'It's up the road, on the left-hand side.'

And so Michael settles on Jolibois and ends up buying La Folie, a dilapidated farmhouse in need of serious TLC. By his own admission Michael is no 'level 5' DIY expert so there's plenty of stories of waiting for local tradesmen to firstly come to the house, secondly waiting for them to provide a quote, and thirdly waiting for them to actually turn up to do the work!

Jolibois is a made-up name for the nearest town to La Folie but it could equally be any small rural town anywhere in France. Michael's told that it'll take 6 months before the locals welcome him as being "one of them" and as the chapters unfold you're taken through the transformation journey. Fortunately Michael has a couple of advantages over many other Brits relocating to France, firstly he took A level French and seems to have a pretty good grasp of the language beforehand - although there are a few 'mouth in foot' moments where he gets the wrong word or the wrong pronunciation - and secondly Michael can play the organ. Now playing the organ might not strike you as an obvious way of integrating with the local community but Michael jumps in feet first and volunteers to play in the local church, and despite not knowing anything about Catholic Mass and the incumbent organist playing everything from memory without any written music, he's soon trusted enough to play at Saturday's Midnight Mass.

The book's full of lovely little stories about the ups and downs of becoming a sheep and chicken owner, of taming the wilderness that is La Folie's garden, of bureaucracy at the local flying club in allocating space in the newly built hanger for Michael's beloved Luscombe, and of the search for a French soul-mate to share Michael's new life with him.

All in all this is a lovely and enjoyable book and one I can recommend even if you don't personally have the desire to up sticks and move permanently to France.

After enjoying reading C'est La Folie I've now found out that the story doesn't end there and the author's written a follow-on book,
Je t'aime a la Folie, where three years later Michael's settled down in his isolated French life with his cat, chickens and the sheep, and he's just about decided to stop his sometimes over-enthusiastic search for a woman to complete his life, when fate intervenes with a re-introduction to Alice, an old school friend, who unfortunately lives in America, in Baltimore.

And so the stage is set for part-deux, conducting a long-distance love affair. Unfortunately Je t'aime a la Folie isn't released yet so I'll just have to put it on my Amazon wish list.

Chocolat - delicious French filled entertainment to read and on TV

Chocolat on DVD

I noticed that tomorrow evening (New Year's Eve) BBC2 is showing the film adaptation of Joanne Harris's book of the same name.

Earlier this year I finished reading the book, and loved it, so am looking forward to seeing the movie which has received some good reviews on Amazon and Internet Movie Database.

Set in the 1950's the story tells of how a travelling single parent Vianne Rocher and her daughter Anouk arrive at a small French village and decide to settle down for a while. Vianne immediately runs into opposition with the local priest over her plans to open a chocolate shop, in Lent, an act he sees as being inspired by the devil to tempt the villagers away from his black sermons.

Vianne's not easily cowed by him though and her delicious chocolate temptations soon start winning over the hearts (and stomachs) of the villagers as the battle rapidly escalates when a gipsy encampment arrives on the river, further inflaming the small-minded nature of many of the villagers.

The book switches between the different characters, their viewpoints and perspectives, from the chocolatey desires of Vianne and her plans for an Easter Chocolate Festival, to the inner torment and hidden secrets of the priest and to the local people caught between the opposing forces of religion and politics.

The film stars Juiliette Binoche, Johnny Depp and Dame Judy Dench and looks to be a great adaptation. If you don't manage to catch the film tomorrow night then the Chocolat DVD is only £4.98 from Amazon and the (thoroughly recommended) Chocolat book is only £5.99.

"Bon Courage!" by Richard Wiles - Book Review

Bon Courage

One of the advantages of owning our own holiday home (apart from some great holidays in France ourselves of course) is that it gives friends and relatives an easy source of birthday and Christmas present ideas.

So no surprise at Christmas last when I received Bon Courage!, fresh off the Amazon delivery lorry.

The author Richard Wiles has written a number of DIY and home improvement books and magazine articles, including Ideal Home magazine. The book starts with him describing how after a collapsing marriage and then losing his job as Senior Editor of a lifestyle magazine he came to make a fresh start by falling in love with the idea of the ultimate DIY project, renovating a French farmhouse with his new partner, Al.

Actually the story of how Richard and Al came to buy a rural Limousin property doesn't actually start until Chapter 2, as the book opens with the perils of camping inside an old barn:

Not content with nibbling through the groundsheet of our tent and stealing our supplies of chocolate whilst we'd been shovelling manure from the adjoining barn, the mice were taking liberties now. As I played the meagre beam of the torch along the tent, I traced the shadowy beam over them lining up along the tent apex beneath the flysheet, eagerly awaiting their turn to launch themselves down the canvas sides as if our tent was some giant theme-park slide.

Richard's story unfolds that after buying an uninhabitable farmhouse and arriving there from the UK during torrential rain, they decided to pitch their tent inside the barn on the basis that it would be warmer and dryer than in the outside field. Unfortunately they'd not figured on the antics of the mice that treated their new guests as some kind of food supply-cum-adventure park!

Slowly the enormity of the challenge of converting their farmhouse dream dawns on Richard and Al as they struggle to clear mountains of accumulated farm debris (including piles of manure, chicken droppings and broken farm implements), integrate with their eccentric neighbours like the elderly Veronique who treats them to copious gateaux and coffee every time they pop round, and of course the many twists and turns of French bureaucracy.

Throughout the book I enjoyed the easy style that Richard writes in and the amusing anecdotes and side tales of his adventures like John the builder who comes over to help Richard, speaks not a word of French, but manages to get by with the French tradesmen with phrases like Bon jewer mate and Low, me old mate - much to Richard's frustration.

By the end of the book Richard and Al are contemplating relocating permanently to France and buying a herd of Llama's to start a trekking business ...

Hopefully I'll be receiving the second half of Richard's story this Christmas with Bon Chance, also from Mr Amazon!

"Borrowing" books from a holiday home - a Modern Moral question

Modern Morals

As I'm frequently working down near Heathrow airport at the momment and it's a 70+ mile drive each way with the M25 and A1(M) in the way (i.e. it's a painful 2-hour morning commute), I've been staying over some nights and hence reading The Times in the hotel fairly frequently.

In an October issue of The Times there was a 'Modern Morals' entry I thought quite interesting:

The holiday home that our family rented in the Lake District contained a selection of second-hand books - left, we assumed, by previous holidaymakers.
Our daughter became engrossed in one book but had not finished it by the time the holiday had ended.
We agreed that she could take it with her, as we left one of our books in its place.
Was this an ethically acceptable swap?

Joe Joseph the resident moral columnist replies ...

Life is so much simpler when you make your own useful assumptions isn't it?

By assuming that the holiday home's library comprised the leftovers of previous guests, it becomes a lot more convenient to execute a swap, doesn't it? After all, the books don't then belong to the owner of the house; they are not, thus, an amenity left to make the stay of the guests more pleasant. They are pretty much one step away from the dustbin. Why you're practically doing the owner a favour by taking them with you!

Once you assume that the books have been left by previous holidaymakers, it becomes less ethically troubling to swap one for one of yours. Were you to assume that they belonged to the owner, you'd feel no more able to carry out this swap than you would swap one of your saucepans for one in the rented house's kitchen.

And what makes you think that holidaymakers leave behind books? Many won't even leave behind two unused tea-bags.

Definitely food for thought!

I'm happy to report that we have no such similar moral challenges with the books in our holiday home.

We've a small library of books that I've read and enjoyed, and our 'Gite Guide' tells our guests that they're more than welcome to read them, borrow them, or leave their own completed holiday reading for the benefit of others. Over the years I've added a more books and some children's books as well, as have our guests, and so much so that I had to erect a second set of book shelves in the bathroom as the shelves in the lounge were overflowing!

Fortunately we'll eventually complete rennovating the second Gite so there'll be room for more books in there if they continue to accumulate. It's interesting when we go on holiday ourselves to France to play 'spot the difference' and try to work out what books are new.

Joe Joseph has published a collection of his Modern Morals columns in the book Should I Flush My Goldfish Down the Loo?; just £6.49 from Amazon.

A Year in The Merde - Holiday reading book review

A Year in The Merde

One of the good things about being away on holiday myself is that I actually get enough relaxation time to sit down and read books. I used to love reading as a child and it's just something that I never seem to get enough time to do these days.

So it was nice to be able to read on holiday, and in fact it became doubly nice to read Stephen Clarke's "A Year in The Merde" which (according to the introduction page) is an "almost-true account of the things that may or may not have occurred to the author in his ten years he has lived in France".

Basically the story tells a complete year in month-by-month chapters (running from September to May for reasons which are explained in the book) of how the Englishman Paul West arrives in Paris to launch an English tea-shop chain as a new venture for France's largest hamburger manufacturing company.

Paul starts off being hardly able to speak a word of French and struggling to understand anything of the country and the culture. When he goes for lunch with his impeccably dressed boss Jean Marie he thinks that eating "Chèvre Chaud" (literally translated as "Hot Goat") means he's going to get a horned goat's head served on a plate, and when the waiter asks "Et comme boisson?" (and what to drink) he mis-hears boisson as poisson and wonders why he's being asked about fish with the goat's head ... ?

There's a series of comic stories throughout the book as Paul tries to get to grips with his French team who try to converse with him in absolutely awful English, and who turn out to be completely useless and were only assigned to the tea-shop venture as France's employment laws prevent Jean Paul from firing them.
The team includes Bernard 'the Walrus' (with moustache to match), Marc who is "ed of hah tee" (head of IT), Stéphanie who's "responsa bull ov poorshassing" (responsible for purchasing for the meat-processing part of the company, and it turns out is having an affair with Jean Paul) and Christine, Jean Paul's assistant who Paul instantly fancies.

Christine it turns out becomes one of the few women in the book that Paul fails to seduce, but there's plenty of others including Jean Paul's daughter who becomes Paul's landlord, Alexa who Paul nearly buys a country cottage with (but the cottage turns out to be on the site of a proposed new Nuclear power station) and Marie his "cinq á Sept" - the person you meet to make love with between five o'clock in the afternoon and seven, before you go home to your spouse.

The story's littered with snippets of Parisian life like the frequent strikes and industrial disputes such as the metro drivers, the street cleaners, the police, the teachers and the porn stars on French TV (don't ask!).

I found that it was a book I couldn't really put down, the story just flowed by, and before I knew it I'd got to the end. It's not a side-splitingly laugh out loud book but instead gives a wry insiders look onto French culture and learning why the Parisians are the world's best at not caring with a massive Gallic shrug of the shoulders.

So Stephen Clarke's A Year in The Merde is well recommended, definitely a 4-star read.

---

New 2007 edition of the Michelin guide to France

Michelin Guide to
France 2007

Yesterday (28th March) Michelin launched their famous 'red book' English language version of the 2007 Michelin Guide to France, containing details of all the coveted 'Michelin starred' restaurants and hotels across France.

The Guide contains some 4,752 hotels and 3,641 restaurants in all comfort and price categories, from neighbourhood bistros to three-star restaurants, and from small family guest houses to vast luxury hotels. As usual there'll be lots of hoo-ha as to who has got what star rating and doubtless there'll be some French Jamie Oliver's who are ecstatic and some that are furious by what's been written about them.

Putting aside the top-starred establishments I've always found the Guide to be a useful (and crucially reliable) reference as to where to eat and go at more modest budgets and I'm sure this year will be no exception. Each writeup contains details of typical menu's, prices and opening times so you don't trek somewhere to find that it's closed for the day. Usefully also there's street plans for many of the sizeable towns and city centres so if you're without Sat-Nav then you can also use the Guide to find tourist attractions and where to park.

Full press releases for the France 2007 and Paris 2007 guides are on Michelin's website.

France 2007 RRP's at £15.99 but as usual Amazon are selling at a discounted price of £10.55. Alternatively they're selling Paris 2007 for £6.59, or as a bundle of France 2007 with UK and Ireland 2007 for £20.14.

I've been reading "A French Restoration"

As I wrote in September, a new Clive Kristen French Rennovation book was published with the rather long title "A French Restoration: The Pleasures and Perils of Renovating a Property in France". I've been enjoying reading the book myself for the last couple of weeks so I thought I'd pass on some thoughts in case anyone's thinking of getting a copy for Christmas.

A French Restoration

So first off I should point out that the book is actually co-authored by David Johnson and Clive Kristen and tells the three year long tale of how David (and his wife Doris) decided to move to France, found their dream property in the Charente region, then lovingly renovated and turned it from an inhabitable shell into their family home.

The book has quite an easy style to read, each chapter (and there are lots) tells one aspect of their journey both with the house and with integrating into a rural French community - whether it's arriving to look at a property but the agent doesn't appear, knocking down walls in their house (and then needing to have an RSJ installed as the floor above started sagging), being given giant pumpkins by the neighbours or emptying their fosse for the first time, there's a good mixture of entertainment and facts mixed together.

There are many little anecdotes that I enjoyed throughout the book, quoting a couple of them ...

Firstly on buying a new washing machine

The salesman demonstrated a masterpiece of Teutonic engineering that could not only adjust to various water types but had programmes to perform all the laundry programmes you could imagine and some you may prefer not to. This was the cleansing equivalent of a NASA probe: smart, cutting edge, and ludicrously expensive. We went for it.

But I baulked at the delivery charge: an extra €20 to shift the machine a few kilometres.

'If it is so clever,' I argued, 'why not just give it a couple of euro and tell it to come on the bus?'

Either my French wasn't up to it, or washing machine salesmen are born with the humour switch jammed in the off position. We paid up.

Or on dealing with the problems of moles in the garden:

Fortunately the French have invented a cunning device to deal with moles. It comprises a small cylinder which contains batteries and two wires, which connect to a little red packet. This is the explosive charge.

All you have to do is open the mole run, drop in the cylinder, and change the setting button from securité to arme, and throw a little earth over the top. Then you take a comfy seat, open a can of 1664, and wait.

The theory is that the mole finds the obstacle in the run and tries to dig it out of the way. The vibration triggers the charge and the mole emerges from the hole like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

The only snag is this. It doesn't work. It is actually less successful pro rata than trying to seduce the creature to the surface by singing in moleish.

Over a fortnight of waiting I downed the best part of two cases of beer. It seemed to me by then that the options were either traditional mole traps, or alcoholism. On the last evening of my vigil, in desperation I think, I cursed the mole in both slurred French and drunken English.

That did the trick. I have not seen a mole in the garden since.

About three-quarters of the book tells David and Doris's renovation journey, the remainder contains practical facts and advice about buying and living in France (water and electricity prices, how to insure a car, income tax rules, etc), with a final section being a useful vocabulary of English to French building terms (and vice versa).

As you've probably guessed by now I quite like the book and am happy to recommend it to others who are thinking about buying in France, or just would like a bit of bedtime entertainment about someone else's trials and tribulations abroad. If I had one niggly little point it's that most of the chapters are (in my view) a teeny bit short. I'd have liked a bit more about in each section such as how David got the fosse emptied and tested, how much it cost, etc (sad person that I am). I guess though that putting too much details in would have risked loosing the story flow and the book may have suffered as a result.

I've still got about ¼ of the book to go so I'll write about my final thoughts when I've got to the end.

So there you are, "A French Restoration: The Pleasures and Perils of Renovating a Property in France" RRP's for £9.99 but is available from places such as Amazon for less (Amazon have it on for £6.59).

New Clive Kristen book: "A French Restoration: The Pleasures and Perils of Renovating a Property in France"

Amazon emailed me yesterday to let me know that Clive Kristen has written a new book which is due to be released on 29th September.

For those that don't know Clive, he's written a number of books about renovating and purchasing a French property and there's a well thumbed copy of "Buying a Property in France: An Insider Guide to Realising Your Dream" in our Brittany Gite that I bought and read well before embarking on our own French adventure. It's a good factual book about the process of buying a property (fees, legal process, prices in different areas, useful french building phrases, etc).

'A French Restoration' on Amazon

Clive's latest book appears (from online reviews) to be a more in depth story following three years of a British couple's own French rennovation dreams ... "When you fall in love common sense flies out of the window".

Judging from Clive's previous book, it should be an interesting read so I think it'll be getting this one as well. The RRP is £9.99, but Amazon.co.uk are offering it for £6.59 (plus P&P), SprintBooks.co.uk for £6.79 and Play.com for £7.49.

Better dig out the Amazon voucher that's lurking in my inbox somewhere ...

PS: Finally finished reading Tom Clancy's 'The Bear and The Dragon' that I blogged about last month. The last 300 pages are better than the first 800 and (no suprises) the American's save the day!

PPS: If you're very quick you can grab a copy of Clive's 'Property in France: An Insider Guide' off ebay, closes monday night and currently only 99p.

My holiday reading books

As it's still the peak holiday period (just), thought I'd share my holiday reading from this summer. As a child and a young adult I used to read prodigiously but now I'm older (ahh) and seemingly working more hours, it's all I can do to keep up with the post each day and a couple of computer magazines - I'm usually way behind on reading my emails for instance.

Holiday time is just about the only opportunity I get to actually sit down and read a book.

This year I read two books on holiday, The Midden by Tom Sharpe and The Bear and the Dragon by Tom Clancy.

The Midden on Amazon

I read The Midden first and like Amazon's review of The Midden, I wasn't overly impressed by it. I quite like Tom Sharpe and his early books are an absolute scream that you just can't stop laughing when reading (e.g. Rioutous Assembly, Ancestral Vices or Wilt). This one has the same madcap characters and farcical situations but I found most of it was fairly predictable and there was only a few momments where I smirked at the humour. Not Mr Sharpe's best IMHO, but still overall a fairly enjoyable read.

The Bear and The Dragon on Amazon

Next up was (or should I say IS?, because at 1136 pages I'm still reading it - up to page 783 so far) The Bear and The Dragon.
Tom Clancy's also written some excellent books (The Hunt for Red October, Clear and Present Danger, Red Storm Rising, etc) and I've always been impressed by the way he weaves together a complex story and brings in loads of insights as to modern warface and chain of command.

In some respects TBATD is similar, there are several different threads of the story (plot to kill the chairman of the GRU, Jack Ryan as US President, mineral discoveries in Russia, Political issues in China, etc) and they way they're weaved together is as usual very clever with dipping between the different story lines. However the book is way way way too long (I liked one review on Amazon that advised "If you must read this book then only start on page 773 as that's where the action starts" and it feels like it could have done with a bit of an editor's cut.

As usual (for Clancy) the American's are portrayed as the Hero's and everyone else gets relegated (the Chinese are portrayed as dumb and sexist and the Russians as being wannabe capitalists).

Don't get me wrong, I do like the book, it's got a good story line, it feels comfortable as Clancy has built the story around many of his characters from previous stories (although it does feel at times like a bit of a contrived reunion), and the way that parts of the story are built together is excellent (e.g. a CNN news reporter ends up filming a Papal envoy getting shot by the Chinese police causing US citizens to abandon buying Chinese products and thus tipping them towards war with Russia).

Amazon's reviews of The Bear and The Dragon on Amazon are mixed. Some people liked it but equally some people that have given it a poor review.

Me ? I'll keep on to the end now, only 300ish more pages to go and the story is supposed to improve towards the end.

Once I've finished with the books I'll leave them on the bookshelf in our Brittany Holiday Gite so guests can read them whilst they're staying. If you want to form your own opinion then you're welcome to come and stay and read them yourself!

---

Categories: Holiday, BookReview, Brittany, Gite, BrittanyGite, HolidayHome