Double-Stacked Bookshelves

Teaser Tuesday:  The Paris Wife Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly meme hosted by Jenn @ A Daily Rhythm . Here are the rules: grab whatever you're reading, open to a random page, select no more than two sentence (NO SPOILERS), share the title and author, and GO! Here's today's teaser: "His letters came crushed and strangled, full of deliciousness, sometimes two and three times a day.  I tried to be more reserved at first, vowing to write only once a week, but that fell apart immediately.  Before long I found myself in a real bind." --page 37           The Paris Wife by Paula McLain I am loving this book so far...such beautiful prose! Happy reading!

I've figured out my guiding topic for the month!  I'm feeling very accomplished today.  This entire challenge will be focused on writers I truly enjoy or who have influence my readings/writings in some way.  I hope people will explore some of the authors/works I discuss throughout the month. For the letter B, I've got four stand out writers who have shaped my reading preferences:  Charles Baudelair, Jorge Luis Borges, Tadeusz Borowski, and Chris Bohjalian. Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) A French poet, essayist, art critic, and Poe translator, Baudelaire focused on the industrialization of Parisian society during the 19th century.  He believed that it was art's purpose to capture the fleeting experience of life in the urban landscape.  Perhaps his most famous work, Las Fleurs du mal ( The Flowers of Evil ), published in 1857, highlighted themes of sex, death, decomposition, decay, metamorphosis, melancholia, and various vices.  The volume was ...

Claude Izner's Murder on the Eiffel Tower is TERRIBLE!!!  If you pass one book over during this holiday season, make sure it's this one.  Oh man.  So bad! I borrowed this book from a friend last week and it sounded promising.  She said it was different, had an odd voice to it, and that she was waiting to make up her mind about it.  That should have been a sign.  Alas, I read the whole thing...and feel like I've lost a few braincells while doing so. The novel follows a group of middle to high class individuals through Paris during the 1889 World Exposition Fair (the one where the Eiffel Tower was unveiled).  What follows is a case of whodunnit.  There is a murder...and then another...and another...and another...yet they are all chalked up to the work of killer bees by the police.  What?!  Unless you are a character from NBC's Grimm , this is simply not plausible.  Victor Legris, a bookseller, is present at the first murder and s...