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    Paris in Love: A Memoir
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    Paris in Love: A Memoir
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    Paris in Love: A Memoir
    Audiobook6 hours

    Paris in Love: A Memoir

    Published by Penguin Random House Audio

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of Wilde in Love, a joyful chronicle of a year in one of the most beautiful cities in the world: Paris.

    "What a beautiful and delightful tasting menu of a book: the kids, the plump little dog, the Italian husband. Reading this memoir was like wandering through a Parisian patisserie in a dream. I absolutely loved it."-Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love

    When bestselling romance author Eloisa James took a sabbatical from her day job as a Shakespeare professor, she also took a leap that many people dream about: She sold her house and moved her family to Paris.

    With no classes to teach, no committee meetings to attend, no lawn to mow or cars to park, Eloisa revels in the ordinary pleasures of life-discovering corner museums that tourists overlook, chronicling Frenchwomen's sartorial triumphs, walking from one end of Paris to another. She copes with her Italian husband's notions of quality time; her two hilarious children, ages eleven and fifteen, as they navigate schools-not to mention puberty-in a foreign language; and her mother-in-law Marina's raised eyebrow in the kitchen (even as Marina overfeeds Milo, the family dog).

    Paris in Love invites the reader into the life of a New York Times bestselling author and her spirited, enchanting family, framed by la ville de l'amour.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateApr 3, 2012
    ISBN9780449010907
    Unavailable
    Paris in Love: A Memoir

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    Reviews for Paris in Love

    4/5

    204 ratings43 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the audiobook of this charmingly funny book written by best-selling romance novelist Eloisa James. While most of the anecdotes about Eloisa's sabbatical year in Paris are delightful in themselves, I was also totally won over by the way Eloisa narrates this book. I periodically re-listen the audiobook because I enjoy Eloisa's narration so much.
    • 5/5
      66 of 75 for 2015. As a rule, I pick up just about every book I find that is even remotely about Paris. It is no secret that Paris is my second favorite city in the world, and in many ways feels like a second home to me. When I find a book about an American living in Paris, walking through this eminently walkable city, I have to read that book and relive my own adventures in the City of Light. Eloisa James' memoir about a sabbatical year spent with her family in Paris is just such a book, and a true delight. Throw into the mix that Ms. James' husband is an Italian academic with family in Italy, and their two children are attending an Italian language school in Paris, and the possibilities for humor (and love) increase dramatically. James, an accomplished author and academic, takes on the challenge of living as an ex-pat (well, for one year) with style and grace, and this book is the result. If you, like me, love Paris and can't get enough of that city, you owe it to yourself to read Eloisa James' memoir. I give it my highest recommendation.
    • 4/5
      This is a delightful book that is recommended for those who enjoy travel books, memoirs, Paris of course, and those who would like to live a simpler life.Eloisa James and her family made the life changing decision to spend a sabbatical year living in Paris. During their stay, James wrote emails and Facebook posts regularly to her friends back home. In this book, she tells the story of their year in Paris in brief snippets and essays - gleaned from those emails and Facebook posts.It is delightful to read her observations about Parisian life, and how her family reacted to Paris - her Italian husband, her teenaged son Luca, her dramatic 10 year old daughter Anna. Also appearing are the flirtatious neighborhood butcher, James' mother-in-law Marina and her overweight Chihuahua Milo, and Anna's school nemesis Domitilla, to name just a few.My only complaint about this book was that I think I read it too fast. Since their Paris memories are compiled in short snippets and essays, I think this book is best read by "dipping in" to it in short bursts, while I read it from cover to cover. I would have savored it more by reading it slowly.Again, highly recommended if you like travel memoirs and Paris!(I received this book from Amazon's Vine Program.)
    • 3/5
      I found myself bored with this one by the end. I do generally like books like this, but there was something about her story telling that was making me want to put the book down and I skimmed a bit of the last few pages.As another reviewer mentioned, I wished this was not in short diary-style entries, and as the title is PARIS in Love, I was hoping for less about her family per say and more about Paris?Not sure what it was, but not my favourite. Not awful, though.
    • 3/5
      Enjoyable, anecdotal snapshots of an American family's year in Paris.
    • 2/5
      Started out funny, then got duller as it went along. All I could think of is that her kids were not disciplined enough to make it in a real school.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed this book -- however, if you are going for the audio book, know that Eloisa James is the reader as well. She talks really, really fast. Many of the observations in the book are short. The effect is kind of like an autobiography by tweet. Nonetheless, I liked her stories. I liked her observations and her family and her adventure abroad. It's a good book -- perhaps even a better book in print format.
    • 5/5
      When she both lost her mother to cancer and went through a battle with that disease herself, romance writer Eloisa James decided to celebrate life and packed up her family and moved to Paris for a year. She and her Italian-American husband took sabbaticals from the university where they lectured, enrolled their kids in an Italian school in Paris and found themselves an apartment. Rather than a detailed step-by-step story, Paris in Love is a series of entries from her journal that she kept that year and touches on many things but her love of Paris shines through it all. Humorous, joyful, interesting and informative this book was a delight. Whether she is writing about her children, 14 year old Luca and 10 year old Anna, her studies of how Frenchwomen are so fashionable and chic, or rhapsodizing over the food this was a lovely way to be introduced to that world famous city. Definitely falling into the class of travel memoir, James avoids expressing her inner thoughts and emotions and keeps the narrative light and lively.I have not read anything by this author before, but I am definitely now in the market to try one of her romance novels. Paris in Love was a lovely introduction to this author, the short diary-like entries made this a great book for dipping in and out of and for anyone who has ever fantasized about running away to Paris, this is a great way to do just that.
    • 4/5
      Interesting style of writing - blurbs that began life as FB or Twitter entries, with occasional fleshed-out essays. Enjoyed this style, since it went quickly, and gave many different mini-vignettes of James' life in Paris. Her children, esp. her daughter, were hilarious to read about. Also, I want to know how Milo the gargantuanly obese chihuahua is doing.
    • 3/5
      Light, charming memoir of the author's sabbatical in Paris. The book's origin as Facebook posts and Twitter entries is apparent -- James strings together many small observations to give a picture of her family's time living in Paris. There's no attempt to draw weightier conclusions than the experience can provide -- and that's refreshing.
    • 5/5
      After an encounter with cancer, the author and her family moved to Paris for a year She shares with us her daily life and impressions which originally took the form of tweets or facebook status updates. Her precocious children and Italian husband, her husband's family, and the city of Paris itself all make this a compulsively readable memoir.
      I smiled all the way through it.
    • 3/5
      A writer and her husband take a year long sabatical in France. She reads her Great Uncle Claude's memoir of his time in Paris and sees similarities and differences with herself. There is a mother-in-law from Italy that we might have learned more about, but i got the sense that the author was a little afraid of her. The stories of the mother-in-law's obese dog were entertaining. She used an interesting writing technique, It was like reading a series of FaceBook posts, I liked it - but it felt oddly disjointed.
    • 4/5
      I loved every single thing about Paris in Love by Eloisa James.When Eloisa James's mother dies of cancer in 2007 and then two weeks she herself is diagnosed with the same cancer, she was sure she knew what would happen next:"I immediately started anticipating the epiphany when I would be struck by the acute beauty of life. I would see joy in my children's eyes (rather than start rebellion), eschew caffeine, and simply be, preferably while doing yoga in front a sunset."When all of that didn't happen, she decided that rather than living her life in the moment, she wanted to live someone else's life - the life of someone who lives in Paris. Since she and her husband are both college professors, they were able to take a sabbatical and set off for Paris with their two children in tow. She is a writer, and had plans for writing 4 books, while in Paris…none of them being a book about her actually being in Paris. So, this book is actually written from small updates, almost journal entries, some even just Facebook status posts. Which makes it wonderfully entertaining and a quick read. It is a life in Paris given to us in humorous bite-size glimpses.
    • 2/5
      It's a collection of Facebook posts. "Paris in little tiny disconnected fragments" would be a more accurate title.
    • 3/5
      Disappointed as it is largely a collection of Facebook posts and tweets, interspersed with a few longer selections. It didn't seem as if much work went into pulling it all together. US author mother drags husband and children to Paris for a year and survives to tell about it. There are some funny bits involving cultural misunderstandings, as well as a much-beloved and overly-fed dog.
    • 3/5
      My latest armchair traveler read, Paris in Love, will take you through snippets of Eloise James's (pen name of historical romance novelist and professor Mary Bly) year-long sabbatical in Paris with her family. Originally her Facebook and Twitter posts, she weaves together the daily happenings and Parisian experiences with her musings on life, family, and her journey after breast cancer. A bit slow and disjointed at times, this allows you to step back and be a part of her life during her year of self-reflection and change. An enjoyable read.
    • 5/5
      One of my favorite cities in the world is Paris, France. I made a number of trips there and always found it to be most enchanting. When I came across a slim memoir, Paris in Love by Eloisa James, I could not resist despite the fact it is obviously directed at women. The parts of the story involving women’s issues and shopping for haute couture, were sometimes funny, but the parts about food, cooking, and visiting art galleries and museums brought back many fond memories. Eloise James is the pen name of Mary Bly, a tenured professor of English Literature at Fordham University. She writes best-selling Regency romance novels under her pen name.Eloise lost her mother to Cancer, and two years later, she received a diagnosis of the same disease. She went through courses of surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, and following an optimistic appraisal by her oncologist, she decided to take a sabbatical move her husband, Alessandro, son, Luca, and daughter, Anna to Paris for a year. The memoir is set up in an interesting way. She begins most chapters with short essays – which grow longer as the story progresses – followed by brief nuggets detailing their adventures.One of the things I admire in the French is their tolerance for dogs in all aspects of society. Here is one of those nuggets. James Writes, “Last night we trotted out to our local Thai ‘gastronomique’ restaurant which means it’s a trifle more fancy than average and serves mango cocktails. A man and his son came in, trailed by a very old, lame golden retriever. The dog felt like lying down, legs straight out, in the middle of the aisle running down the restaurant – on a Friday night. The waiter and all customers patiently stepped over and around him, over and over and over…Bravo, France!” (34).Many of these nuggets involve the close attention to detail so necessary to a writer. She writes, “Alessandro and I followed an exquisite pair of legs out of the Métro today. They were clad in flowery black lace stockings and dark red pumps. Their owner wore a coat with five buttons closing the back flap, and gloves that matched her pumps precisely. We walked briskly up the steps, and I turned around to see the front of the coat, only to find that the lady in question was at least seventy. She was both dignified and très chic. Old age, à la parisienne!” (49). At the end of the memoir, Eloisa comes to appreciate the way French women dress and act. In fact, I think I might have seen that women several times in several places.Another subject Eloisa attends to is literature. It moves her as much as it moves me. She writes, “Alessandro came in to check on me at one point, sympathetic about my cold but very disapproving when he realized my pile of soggy tissues was the result of tears rather than a virus. ‘I never cry when I read,’ he pointed out, with perfect truth. His nighttime reading, a biography of Catherine the Great, seemed unlikely tp generate tears, even from one susceptible to sentimentality as I. His book didn’t seem like much fun, especially after I inquired about the one thing I knew about Catherine – to wit, her purported erotic encounters with equines – and he informed me that the empress was a misunderstood feminist whose sexual inventory, while copious, was nevertheless conservative. Nothing to cry about there” (61).All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed Eloisa James’ memoir, Paris in Love. I especially liked the handy list of restaurants and museums she visited. I plan on taking this book along on my next trip to the city of lights. 5 stars--Jim, 7/14/16
    • 4/5
      I had such a fun time reading this book that I wished it went on forever…

      I have no idea Eloisa James was a famous writer before I read the book. Evidently she is a wildly famous historical romance author and an English professor in a University. However, I’m glad that I didn’t know her before I read the book, since I felt like reading the journal entries of a dear friend or the advice giving by another Mother friend with children of the same age. There is no way I could have the same experience if I had known how popular she was.

      After recovering from breast cancer, Eloisa took a year off from teaching and her American life, sold her house and car, and moved to Paris for a year. She moved there with her Italian husband, who is also a professor, her teen son and her 10-year old daughter. This book is a collection from her blog and Facebook posts that she had written during that journey. What made this book so fun to read was Eloisa’s wit and humor, and her ability to make every minor detail of her Parisian life interesting.

      Here’s one of her passage about skinny Paris women:

      “I have discovered at least one secret of thin French women. We were in a restaurant last night, with a chic family seated at the next table. The bread arrived, and a skinny adolescent girl reached for it. Without missing a beat, maman picked up the basket and stowed it on the bookshelf next to the table. I ate more of my bread in sympathy.”

      A regular street scene in Paris:

      “Archetypal French scene: two boys playing in the street with baguettes were pretending not that they were swords, as I first assumed, but giant penises.”

      She also wrote about museums, shops, churches, schools, statues, bridges, parks, French women and men, fashion, people, sights, wonderful Parisian food as well as not-to-miss paintings and pastries. Since I’ve been to Paris before and her detailed and accurate descriptions made me miss the city terribly. Her comparisons of French and American parenting were interesting to read, and quite similar to what Pamela Druckerman wrote about in Bringing up Bebe, another book about France. Her facts about Paris were reliable and accurate; her observations of subtle differences were fun to ponder over. Reading it was like experiencing everything Parisian first hand. Overall, I think it’s a book worth reading, for both people who had been to Paris or not, although it’s kind of short due to the format.
    • 2/5
      This memoir is based on the author’s time in Paris. She moves to the famous city from her home in New Jersey with her two children and Italian husband in tow. The family’s goal is to embrace a sweeter, slower life for a single year, savoring food and experiences. The author, by her own admission, compiled her Facebook and Twitter posts about her time in Paris to create this “memoir.” The result is a completely disjointed book. There are funny bits and astute observations, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that the entire book is a series of non sequiturs with the loosest of threads holding it together. She’ll say something about her daughter’s difficult time adjusting to her new school and then the very next line is about a delicious meal she ate and then the next mentions their overweight chihuahua. It was sweet to read about the wonderful meals she ate and museums she saw, but for me it wasn’t enough to justify a book. The format was too fragmented and I probably would have enjoyed it more if I’d read them on Facebook, in the original form they were intended. BOTTOM LINE: There are too many great Parisian memoirs out there to make this one worthwhile. Read it only if you’re in the mood for a tiny taste of Paris and don’t care what form it comes in.  
    • 4/5
      Having lost her mother to cancer and then beaten breast cancer herself, romance author and Shakespeare professor Eloisa James (the pen name of Mary Bly) wanted a chance to live out a dream. So she and her Italian husband, Alessandro, a fellow professor, and their two children set about winnowing down their possessions, put their suburban home on the market, took sabbaticals from their respective universities, and moved to Paris for a year. During the course of that French year, James updated her Facebook status and Tweeted about their experience living as ex-pats and it is these snippets, slightly expanded, plus a few longer vignettes that have been collected into this light memoir of their year abroad. James offers brief snapshots of ordinary life in Paris. She's captured the way they all meet life in this foreign culture. There's the kids' adjustment to their Italian school, the challenge and struggle of learning all their subjects in another language (despite the fact that they know Italian thanks to their father), and the negotiation of the social ins and outs of a new school. She offers minute descriptions of the sights, sounds, and smells around their charming neighborhood. She rhapsodizes about the shopping and the food so readily available to them and their endless parade of welcome guests. She tells of trips to Italy to see her mother-in-law, Marina, and Milo, the dog masquerading as a furry speed bump who once belonged to the family but now lives in Italy permanently, growing ever fatter off of delicious table scraps, and she tells of Marina's visit to them in Paris. She captures the daily existence, complete with humorous moments, thoughtful pauses, frustrations, and joys of raising a family while having the flexibility of writing and researching from anywhere in the world. That these moments are in Paris rather than in the US makes them seem slightly exotic but aside from setting, in many ways they are really universal. Arranged chronologically, the brief paragraphs of the memoir provide a nice amuse bouche of a book. But the very nature of the frothy and delectable brief bits means there is a skimming, superficial feel to the memoir. It comes across as fleeting and insubstantial, lacking a narrative cohesiveness and feeling sketched, unfinished in some way. I imagine that it was beyond delightful to be on the receiving end of the status updates and tweets but I just don't know that the format works in favor of a completed memoir. James is a beautiful writer though and what she has captured and describes in the short paragraphs is very much the essence of each moment. Perhaps this is better as a book to dip into and out of over a long span of time rather than reading it in one sitting. It is a tiny confection and must be approached as such.
    • 5/5
      I do not as a whole like books in which the author spends a year in Paris and gushes about how wonderful Paris is. However Eloisa James can do whatever she wants because I loved this book. I loved the style it was written in, I loved that it made me want to love Paris again (Paris and I have a love-hate relationship) and the cast of characters was just delightful. It did make me want to get on a plane and go there.

      This was a review copy given to me by the publisher.
    • 3/5
      I'm torn on to how to rate this book - I wasn't aware that the book was just a series of barely expanded Facebook posts, so while I absolutely loved the Paris that Eloisa James wrote about, I couldn't help but feel like it would have been better if she had expanded on more of her posts. I do love Paris though, and this was a quick easy read. 3.5 stars
    • 3/5
      She warns us: This memoir of James' year in Paris is an edited version of Facebook posts and Tweets, interspersed with some "longer" (2-6 page) essays. As a memoir, it is flimsy, organized mostly around the theme of "one year in Paris," although there are some recurring motifs of living with cancer and aging, living life to the fullest, my crazy relatives, raising teenagers is hell, etc. Truthfully, it often feels like a report on what she ate, where she shopped, and how her children are doing in their fancy school. If you're an upper-middle-class woman of a certain age who has had fantasies of chucking it all and moving to Paris, you're the target audience here (especially considering the "where to shop" coda). If you crave a real meaty book about living in the great city, there are better choices.

      Honestly, with the format of tiny, disjointed paragraphs, this book is best for fans of Shakespearean scholar Mary Bly or romance writer Eloisa James, or perhaps moms who can only read in 45-second snippets due to the constant interruption of small children -- that is just enough time to complete each little section. James is a good writer, and the prose here is tight and occasionally sparkling, but it's a light, rambling confection without much point. -cg
    • 4/5
      A delightful memoir of the author's year in Paris with her family. She is both a bestselling romance novelist and a professor of English lit. So I figured the book would be fun and have light humorous touches - it did. I was trepidatious when I realized it was written in a kind of short entry Facebook update/blog post style, but it was good. Made for light hearted (mostly) short vignettes of life in Paris with a 15 year old son, younger daughter, and Italian husband. The kids attend school in Paris for the year and she shares details about their goings on as well. Would make a better purchase than library read, as you want to pick it up and dip into it now and then in smaller doses, rather than a marathon reading session.
    • 4/5
      This is a wonderful little peek into the daily life of New York Times bestselling author Eloisa James. She decided one day to take a sabbatical, sell her house, and move her family to Paris. Her year there is told in funny, loving excerpts, covering the antics of her two children, the wonderful food, and the ups and downs of married life all set in one of the most enchanting and beautiful cities. A light, fun read.
    • 4/5
      A fun and spirited romp through Paris with romance writer Eloisa James. You'll laugh and get teary as you read about her family's year in Paris - the food (oh - the food), the French (oh, yes - guess who lives in Paris?), her children's experiences in an Italian language school in the City of Light (of course when you read the story you can discover the logic in this this choice), and her passion for romance and all things fashionable in their adopted hometown. I smile just thinking about this book.
    • 4/5
      Most of us just can’t travel to Paris every summer. This would be a sad thing, a tragic thing, really, if it weren’t for marvelous books like these that take us to Paris anyway, saving us $1213 (price of an airline ticket to Paris minus the cost of this book) and sixteen hours on plane.Paris in Love is a book with tiny, tiny stories, some mere paragraphs, about the year she and her family spent in Paris. Absolutely delightful. If you can’t travel to Paris this summer, you must read this little book.
    • 4/5
      The author and her husband sell their house and move their family to Paris for a year. I enjoyed the many vignettes of her children's school lives, Christmas and winter in Paris, stories from the many small museums not on typical tourist trip plans, May Day in Paris and liles of the valley, the story of a friend with ovarian cancer, and side visits to Italy. I struggled initially with the book's format: a short narrative to open each chapter, followed by paragraph-length posts (Facebook-like) that jumped around. I wished for a more narrative account for the first half of the book. By the end, though, I wanted to hop onto the next plane to Paris for a year! If you're going to Paris, don't miss the list of shopping, dining and museum recommendations in the back of the book.
    • 5/5
      What a wonderful book this is! Eloisa James has written a memoir that is at times funny, romantic, and poignant. After a health crisis, she and her husband Allessandro both take a sabbatical from their respective teaching positions and move their family to Paris. The book is chock full of little vignettes of their life in France, adjusting to the cultural differences, finding their way around the city and even bridging the language issue. I particularly like the stories about her feisty daughter, Anna and her run- ins with a fellow classmate who eventually becomes her friend. There were so many interesting parts to the book. My heart felt sad when Ms. James wrote about a small museum of French historical treasures started by a local banker and later imparts the fact that the house was donated to the French government, his son died as a soldier for France and yet the entire family was shipped off to Auschwitz and never returned.The American in me loved that some of the highly touted French cuisine is in fact, not so good, but the description of most of the food is simply amazing. The markets, the stores, the buildings make one want to chuck it all and head to France. The stories of the homeless man living in a tent with two little trees as his enjoyment in life make you appreciate life here. I had a good laugh with the stories about Milo, the family’s part time Chihuahua who lives with Allesandro’s mother in Venice and weighs 27 pounds! Mostly, I enjoyed the everyday stories of a family adjusting to change and loving being together. I read most of this book while writing a complicated grant for the library where I work and I couldn’t wait to get home and start reading and feeling the stress just flow away with every page.
    • 4/5
      Eloisa James shares with us the year she spent in Paris with her husband and two children. The writing style is in the form of short updates from her Facebook and Twitter feeds & slightly longer parts from emails. This keeps events moving along & lets you see things without a lot of clutter. It keeps you very focused on her. I like the style. It was a fun memoir with plenty of detail about loife in Paris, the adjustments, the shopping, the kids' adventures in schooling, the people they all encounter and of course, the food. Overall I found this a very enjoyable book