Paris in Winter: An Illustrated Memoir
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15
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Average rating5
Paris in Winter combines fanciful ink and watercolor drawings by American artist and writer David Coggins with charming vignettes about his family's annual New Year's sojourns to Paris, which, because of their unending love for the city, they've been taking together for almost 20 years. This memoir of poetic, lighthearted stories highlights the family's passion for art and food, fashion and social life. Family rituals--from having lunch each January at the delightful Le Grand Vefour to haunting favorite antique shops and seeking out-of-the-ordinary spots, like a little known garden or a gypsy circus--are interspersed with serendipitous moments: hearing Bono sing "Happy Birthday" to a friend in a bistro, adopting an abandoned lap dog, and the simple pleasures of Parisian street life. Coggins's delicate and intimate drawings capture classic Parisian scenes as well as family and friends against the backdrop of the elegant City of Light under the cloak of winter. Across cafes and hotels, apartments and galleries, the family mixes with a lively group of Parisian and international actors, designers, writers, and students. Furthermore, Coggins weaves in fascinating bits of the city's history and artistic lore, from Victor Hugo's interior designs to the painting that legend has it started Impressionism, to delight Francophiles all over.
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My sister has been to Paris many times. “I can't count the number of times I have been to Paris,” she tells me.
Often she comes in the winter. Her son is a wine merchant. He comes to France several times a year for business. My sister comes along to help his wife with the kids while her son works.
This year she asks me to come along.
We arrive on January 27. We stay until February 12. Winter in Paris is cold. And wet. And beautiful.
I load up my Kindle with Paris books...travel guides...cookbooks...histories of Paris...poems from Paris...
But I only take along one real book. It's Paris in Winter: An Illustrated Memoir by David Coggins.
It is the perfect book for my trip.
Here's the first page:
“What do you do in Paris every winter? You stay for such a long time.”
“We look at art, which makes us hungry. So we eat, which is really why we go to Paris.”
“How many years have you been doing this?”
“Twenty or thirty.”
“Always in winter?”
“We've gone to France in all seasons.”
“Why winter? We were there in winter once. It was cold.”
“Fewer tourists. Sometimes it's cold. Often it's very pleasant. It's beautiful really, the spareness outside, the warmth inside.”
“You've been to lots of places.”
“We like to travel.”
“Don't you ever get bored going back to Paris?”
