Tag: editions Grasset

BookBlast® France | Top 5 French Reads January, 2018

New year, new in from France: here is our list of top 5 reads in French creating a buzz across the Channel for all of you Francophiles out there . . . Special thanks to our friends in Paris for their recommendations.
The books reviewed are listed alphabetically by author surname. @EditionsGrasset @beigbedersays @robert_laffont #francoisjonquet @olivierguez @jschnerf
@robert_laffont @EditionsduSeuil @EditionsZulma

I, Self, Me: social media and the human condition in the digital age

A Life Without End (Une Vie Sans Fin) Frédéric Beigbeder (Grasset)

59 million people die every year. But Beigbeder refuses to submit to such a fate, and sets off instead to discover the secret to eternal life. His journalistic investigation morphs into a work of literature – “a book of ‘non-fiction science’; a novel in which all the scientific developments have been published in Science or Nature.”
Beigbeder is as irreverent and rebellious and original as he was twenty-three years ago when I first read him. He has lost none of his self-deprecating humour and mischievous attitude underpinned by an eclectic body of knowledge; quite the contrary, he has matured and honed his skills. Twenty years ago he despaired of making love last – today he despairs of making life last.
frederic beigbeder bookblast diary“To publish your photo is now more important than your signature on a cheque, or on a marriage contract.” A radio-TV host celebrity in France, Beigbeder’s relationship with image and selfies is paradoxical: he is delighted when fans ask to pose with him, yet is intensely irritated by the one-upmanship involved. When Robert Pattinson a.k.a. Harry Potter is promoting his new film Maps to the Stars at Cannes, he signs a photo for Romy, one of Beigbeder’s two daughters. She is disappointed not to have snapped a selfie with her hero to post online for all her friends to see. Her father is hurt that his daughter has never asked him for a selfie (while other kids do, as he’s on TV).

Continue reading BookBlast® France | Top 5 French Reads January, 2018

BookBlast® France | Top 5 French Reads September, 2017

La rentrée littéraire is a curious phenomenon: hundreds of new books of all genres flood French bookshops and the review pages of the literary press between the end of August and the beginning of November. It is a way for publishers to capitalize on the awards season, and at Frankfurt Book Fair in October – at which France is the guest of honour this year – as well building up a buzz leading into the Christmas period when the most books are sold.

Anglophile French friends in Paris send recommendations. And then there are wonderful talk shows about books like La grande librairie (France 5) or Jérôme Garcin’s Le Masque et la Plume (France Inter) and of course, radio France Culture – all are streamed on the web.

So here is our first curated top 5 list of five books in French for those of you looking for some French teasers from across the Channel . . . Continue reading BookBlast® France | Top 5 French Reads September, 2017

Review | Virginie Despentes, Vernon Subutex 1 | Maclehose Press

“Some said it was karma, the industry had grown at an extraordinary upturn in the era of C.D.s – selling their clients their whole discography on a medium that cost half the price to make and was sold for twice the price in shops . . . with no real benefit to music fans, since no one had ever complained about vinyl records . . .” Age twenty, Vernon Subutex started work as an assistant at the record shop Revolver, and took over when the owner moved to Australia. File sharing on the internet thanks to the likes of Napster and Limewire heralded the beginning of the end of the party. In 2006 he shut up shop. 

Live for today, who cares about tomorrow?

Easy-going Vernon had drifted through Parisian night life, lost in music and high on sex and drugs, oblivious to time passing and how people change. “He didn’t do monogamy . . . Vernon understands women, he has made an extensive study of them. The city is full of lost souls ready to do his cleaning and get down on all fours to lavish him with lingering blow jobs designed to cheer him up.” Continue reading Review | Virginie Despentes, Vernon Subutex 1 | Maclehose Press

Dreaming of Outer Mongolia (3) | Of Shamans, Buddhists & Shangri-La

Arkhan Valley
Our Toyota 4×4 lurched and dodged between the trees. Nyam Bileg seemed to be winning at an Olympian task. At one point he drove at a perilous angle along the edge of a dry gully.

bookblast khalkha wife dael
19thC Khalkha wife’s dael (National Museum, UB)

When I’d arrived in Ulaanbaatar, Oyuna handed me a blue dael – the traditional three-quarter length cotton, silk or wool gown worn by men and women. Serving as a coat, robe or a dress, for every day or ceremonial occasions, it buttons beneath the right arm and at the right shoulder to a high, round collar. It is convenient for riding, travel and extremes of temperature.  When cinched at the waist, a pocket of material is formed for carrying personal items. She told me I would find it useful. Now I was beginning to understand why. It offered a handy way of being private when peeing out in the wilds.

One last stop and we’d be home and dry, or so I thought, as I closed my dael and wound my way back to the 4×4 through cow parsley and gorse bushes. A large puddle turned out to be a stream flooding across the forest track. The front wheels jammed in tight, and the back wheels spun deep into the mud.  We watched Oyuntsetseg, Ider Od and their companions disappear down the hill in their resilient little Russian-built UAZ van. Their driver, Tulga, was a Dayan Deerkh man, so he knew the lie of the land. Some 3 hours later, the Toyota was pulled out by a tractor.

bookblast arkhan valley mongoliaMan vs. wolf
We arrived in Arkhan Valley in time for cow milking. Calves frisked around outside the corral until their mothers were done, and then they were let loose. Great patches of permafrost were pointed out to me as I watched. Continue reading Dreaming of Outer Mongolia (3) | Of Shamans, Buddhists & Shangri-La

Dreaming of Outer Mongolia (2) | A Mystical Wilderness

The Call of the Wild
When the Siberian and Chinese tectonic plates pushed up against each other, Mongolia was bookblast map mongoliaformed: a great landlocked highland plateau − sandwiched between Russia and China. No wonder the fierce warriors of the 13th and 14th century Mongol Empire who were masters at the art of war are still the stuff of legend.

I was told that sections of the Great Wall of China were built to keep the Mongolians out. This toughness, combined with an equally powerful shamanic spirituality dating back to Chinggis Khan and the Mongol Hordes – intertwined later with Buddhism from Tibet – and a continued adherence to centuries-old customs and traditions, are a seductive combination.

Mongolians live in two worlds: that of the senses, the observable, the scientific; and on a metaphysical and spiritual level − the unseen world of spirits and magic.

Continue reading Dreaming of Outer Mongolia (2) | A Mystical Wilderness

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