Book picks similar to
France: Inspiration du Jour - An Artist's Sketchbook by Rae Dunn
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nonfiction
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paris
The Complete Idiot's Guide to RVing
April Maher - 2001
An updated and revised guide for the more than 30 million Americans who are living the RV lifestyle and the millions of others who have considered it but have not yet taken the plunge, The Complete Idiot's Guide® to RVing, Second Edition, includes the following: Basic facts about the different types of RVs-camper, van, motor home, bus, or tow rig-and the advantages of each; Advice on buying your RV, from dealer negotiations to acquiring the proper insurance; Driving tips for piloting your RV; Information on how to choose a campground with an eye for water, electricity, propane, wastewater dump, hookups, phone, cable, and campground rules.
Flirting with French: How a Language Charmed Me, Seduced Me, and Nearly Broke My Heart
William Alexander - 2014
Voila!” —Mark Greenside, author of I’ll Never Be French (No Matter What I Do) William Alexander is more than a Francophile. He wants to be French. There’s one small obstacle though: he doesn’t speak la langue française. In Flirting with French, Alexander sets out to conquer the language he loves. But will it love him back? Alexander eats, breathes, and sleeps French (even conjugating in his dreams). He travels to France, where mistranslations send him bicycling off in all sorts of wrong directions, and he nearly drowns in an immersion class in Provence, where, faced with the riddle of masculine breasts, feminine beards, and a turkey cutlet of uncertain gender, he starts to wonder whether he should’ve taken up golf instead of French. While playing hooky from grammar lessons and memory techniques, Alexander reports on the riotous workings of the Académie française, the four-hundred-year-old institution charged with keeping the language pure; explores the science of human communication, learning why it’s harder for fifty-year-olds to learn a second language than it is for five-year-olds; and, frustrated with his progress, explores an IBM research lab, where he trades barbs with a futuristic hand-held translator. Does he succeed in becoming fluent? Readers will be as surprised as Alexander is to discover that, in a fascinating twist, studying French may have had a far greater impact on his life than actually learning to speak it ever would. “A blend of passion and neuroscience, this literary love affair offers surprise insights into the human brain and the benefits of learning a second language. Reading William Alexander’s book is akin to having an MRI of the soul.” —Laura Shaine Cunningham, author of Sleeping Arrangements “Alexander proves that learning a new language is an adventure of its own--with all the unexpected obstacles, surprising breakthroughs and moments of sublime pleasure traveling brings.” —Julie Barlow, author of Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong
Face to Face with Vincent Van Gogh
Aukje Vergeest - 2015
It also relates the extraordinary history of the museum's collection, a collection that has enabled the Van Gogh Museum to evolve into a world-renowned centre of knowledge about Van Gogh's work and the art of his time.
The Days of the French Revolution
Christopher Hibbert - 1980
Napoleon. Louis XVI. Robespierre, Danton, Mirabeau, Marat. Madame Roland's salon. A passionate throng of Parisian artisans storming the Bastille. A tide of ebullient social change through wars, riots, beheadings, betrayal, conspiracy, and murder.CHRISTOPHER HIBBERT was born in Leicester in 1924 and educated at Radley and Oriel College, Oxford. Described by the New Statesman as "a pearl of biographers," he has established himself as a leading popular historian whose works reflect meticulous scholarship and has written more than twenty-five histories and biographies. Married with three children, he lives in Oxfordshire.
Parisian Lives: Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, and Me
Deirdre Bair - 2019
who managed to secure access to Nobel Prize-winning author Samuel Beckett. He agreed that she could write his biography despite never having written--or even read--a biography herself. The next seven years of intimate conversations, intercontinental research, and peculiar cat-and-mouse games resulted in Samuel Beckett: A Biography, which went on to win the National Book Award and propel Deirdre to her next subject: Simone de Beauvoir. The catch? De Beauvoir and Beckett despised each other--and lived essentially on the same street. While quite literally dodging one subject or the other, and sometimes hiding out in the backrooms of the great caf�s of Paris, Bair learned that what works in terms of process for one biography rarely applies to the next. Her seven-year relationship with the domineering and difficult de Beauvoir required a radical change in approach, yielding another groundbreaking literary profile. Drawing on Bair's extensive notes from the period, including never-before-told anecdotes and details that were considered impossible to publish at the time, Parisian Lives is full of personality and warmth and give us an entirely new window on the all-too-human side of these legendary thinkers.
Creative Nature and Outdoor Photography
Brenda Tharp - 2003
Author Brenda Tharp’s inspiring approach has garnered fans all over the world, as she teaches that magical skill no camera can do for you: learn how to “see.” Readers expand their photographic vision and discover deep wellsprings of creativity as they learn to use light, balance, color, design, pattern, texture, composition, and many simple techniques to take a photo from ordinary to high-impact.Featuring more than 150 stunning, all-new images, Creative Nature & Outdoor Photography, Revised Edition is for anyone who understands the basic technical side to photography but wants to wake up their creative vision.
Entre Nous: A Woman's Guide to Finding Her Inner French Girl
Debra Ollivier - 2003
Why do French women always look inimitably stylish? How do they manage to sit in a café for a three-course lunch and a glass of wine...by themselves? What gives them the certainty that allows them to refuse anything-whether a man, a job, or a little black dress-that doesn't suit them perfectly?More than just a book on fashion, Entre Nous is about the essence of French living-its observations about French women and their ways will help you take the best of all pages from the French girl's book: the page that reveals how to really enjoy life."Ollivier spent a decade in France and learned a thing or two about how French women cultivate that sense of being easy in one's skin...(she) helps us bridge the cultural gap."- Seattle Times
In Progress: See Inside a Lettering Artist's Sketchbook and Process, from Pencil to Vector
Jessica Hische - 2015
See everything, from Hische's rough sketches to her polished finals for major clients such as Wes Anderson, NPR, and Starbucks. The result is a well of inspiration and brass tacks information for designers who want to sketch distinctive letterforms and hone their skills. With more than 250 images and metallic silver ink printed throughout to represent her penciled sketches, this highly visual book is an essential—and entirely enjoyable—resource for those who practice or simply appreciate the art of hand lettering.
Paris, I Love You but You're Bringing Me Down
Rosecrans Baldwin - 2012
Despite the fact that he had no experience in advertising. And despite the fact that he barely spoke French. After an unimaginable amount of red tape and bureaucracy, Rosecrans and his wife packed up their Brooklyn apartment and left the Big Apple for the City of Light. But when they arrived, things were not eactly what Rosecrans remembered from a family vacation when he was nine years old.Paris, I Love You but You're Bringing Me Down is a nimble comic account of observing the French capital from the inside out. It is an exploration of the Paris of Sarkozy, text-message romances, smoking bans, and a McDonald's beneath the Louvre—the story of an American who arrives loving Paris all out of proportion, but finds life there to be completely unlike what he expected. Over eighteen months, Rosecrans must rely on his dogged American optimism to get him through some very unromantic situations—at work (writing booklets on how to breast-feed, raise, and nurture children), at home (trying to finish writing his first novel in an apartment surrounded on all sides by construction workers), and at every confusing French dinner party in between. An offbeat update to the expat canon, Paris, I Love You is a book about a young man finding his preconceptions replaced by the oddities of a vigorous, nervy city—which is just what he needs to fall in love with Paris for the second time.
Beaches
Gray Malin - 2016
His awe-inspiring aerial photographs of beaches around the world are shot from doorless helicopters, creating playful and stunning celebrations of light, shape, and perspective, as well as summer bliss. Combining the spirit of travel, adventure, luxury, and artistry, Malin built his eponymous lifestyle brand from a deep passion for photography and interior design. His work forges the synergy between wanderlust and adventure, creating the ultimate visual escape.Beaches features more than twenty cities across six continents: Australia: Sydney; North America: Santa Monica, Miami, San Francisco, Kaua’i, Chicago, The Hamptons, and Cancun; South America: Rio de Janeiro; Europe: Capri, Rimini, Forte dei Marmi, Viareggio, Amalfi Coast, Barcelona, Lisbon and Saint-Tropez; Africa: Cape Town; Asia: Dubai
The Dresden Dolls Companion
Amanda Palmer - 2006
This Boston-based alternative pop/German-like cabaret duo hand-designed this book which includes art, photos, commentary and 11 songs from their 2004 release. Songs included are: Bad Habit * Coin Operated Boy * Girl Anachronism * Good Day * Gravity * Half Jack * The Jeep Song * Missed Me *Perfect Fit * Slide * Truce.
A Designer's Eye 2: Scrapbooking with Patterned Paper
Ali Edwards - 2006
Learn how to find the perfect paper to work with your photos. Learn how to place patterns on your pages for maximum impact. You will learn how to mix and match a variety of patterns. Includes great tips on how to store and organize you pattered paper for easy access.
The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles
Martin Gayford - 2006
This was, without doubt, the most celebrated cohabitation in art history: never, before or since have two such towering artistic talents been penned up in so small a space. They were the Odd Couple of art history. Predictably, the results were explosive. The dâenouement of their life together has entered into folklore. Two months after Gauguin arrived in Arles, Van Gogh suffered a psychological crisis. He spent most of the rest of his life in a mental institution. Gauguin fled from Arles, and they never saw each other again. But in the brief period during which they worked together a stream of masterpieces was created within the studio they shared. Here, for the first time, the full story of their life together is told.
True Pleasures: A Memoir of Women in Paris
Lucinda Holdforth - 2005
Rule-breakers and style-setters, demimondes and diplomats, these women were utterly diverse, yet all shared one common passion — Paris, the world’s headquarters of femininity.At a turning point in her life, Lucinda Holdforth journeys to Paris and takes a very personal tour through the lives, loves, and losses of its celebrated women. She evokes the city’s incarnations from Louis XIV through the French Revolution, two world wars and the Paris of the new millennium. As she walks in their footsteps, she draws inspiration from the fascinating women who created and nurtured the world’s most civilized city. Sophisticated, witty, and intelligent, this entrancing travelogue will seduce and inspire every woman in search of her own true pleasures.
My Paris Dream: An Education in Style, Slang, and Seduction in the Great City on the Seine
Kate Betts - 2015
“Just go.” As a young woman, Kate Betts nursed a dream of striking out on her own in a faraway place and becoming a glamorous foreign correspondent. After college—and not without trepidation—she took off for Paris, renting a room in the apartment of a young BCBG (bon chic, bon genre) family and throwing herself into the local culture. She was determined to master French slang, style, and savoir faire, and to find a job that would give her a reason to stay.After a series of dues-paying jobs that seemed only to reinforce her outsider status, Kate’s hard work and willingness to take on any assignment paid off: Her writing and intrepid forays into la France Profonde—true France—caught the eye of John Fairchild, the mercurial fashion arbiter and publisher of Women’s Wear Daily, the industry’s bible. Kate’s earliest assignments—investigating the mineral water preferred by high society, chasing after a costumed band of wild boar hunters through the forests of Brittany—were a rough apprenticeship, but she was rewarded for her efforts and was initiated into the elite ranks of Mr. Fairchild’s trusted few who sat beside him in the front row and at private previews in the ateliers of the gods of French fashion. From a woozy yet mesmerizing Yves Saint Laurent and the mischievous and commanding Karl Lagerfeld to the riotous, brilliant young guns who were rewriting all the rules—Martin Margiela, Helmut Lang, John Galliano—Betts gives us a view of what it was like to be an American girl, learning about herself, falling in love, and finding her tribe.Kate Betts’s captivating memoir brings to life the enchantment of France—from the nightclubs of 1980s Paris where she learned to dance Le Rock, to the lavender fields of Provence and the grand spectacle of the Cour Carrée—and magically re-creates that moment in life when a young woman discovers who she’s meant to be.