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Showing posts from March, 2020

My COVID19 Shelter-In-Place Reading List

Janet Flanner with Ernest Hemingway during WWII After I got back from the Paris study abroad program 6 weeks ago, I decided to expand my reading around the cultural life of Paris and Montparnasse in the early 20th century. I've finished the first 6 on this list, and the enforced stay-at-home policy at the moment will give me plenty of time to finish the rest. All of these books are very good, in different ways: Shocking Paris: Soutine, Chagall, and the Outsiders of Montmartre , by Stanley Meisler (despite its title, this is a well researched and well written book that is based around a sympathetic biography of the painter Chaim Soutine, who lived in Montparnasse for more than 30 years and is buried in the Cimitiere de Montparnasse.) Americans in Paris , selected by Adam Gopnik. (An anthology of writing, mainly letters and essays, by American politicians, writers, artists, etc, who visited or lived in Paris. Everyone from Benjamin Franklin to Isadora Duncan to Henry James,