I can’t believe I haven’t done a post on the English-language bookshops of Paris before!

I searched this blog (yes, I wrote all of it, but I’ve a mind like a sieve this days) and only came up with one post on Berkeley Books of Paris. So here’s a little list I’ve compiled:

Second-hand bookstores:

San Francisco Book Company
17 rue Monsieur le Prince
Paris, 75006
(near métro Odéon)

Excellent selection of literature, fiction, poetry, philosophy, history. They also have a very large selection of pocketbooks: literature, fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, mystery, etc.

Berkeley Books of Paris
8, rue Casimir Delavigne
Paris, 75006
(near métro Odéon)

Excellent selection of literature, fiction and poetry.

Tea & Tattered Pages
24 rue Mayet,
Paris 75006
(Métro Duroc)

You hear about this one constantly: it’s mentioned in every guide and tourist website. I went once, six years ago and was completely unimpressed. Not only were the books tattered, they were downright grubby. And it was all bestsellers and mainstream fiction. (Wow, do I ever sound like a snob!) I should go again and see what they’re like now.

New books:

Village Voice Bookshop
6, rue Princesse
Paris, 75006
(near métro Odéon)

Excellent selection of new, English-language books; primarily literature, fiction and poetry. Respectable selection of history, philosophy, art, psychology, etc. The owner, Odile Hellier, tells a moving story on this page about the history of the shop.

Galignani
224, rue de Rivoli
Paris, 75001
(Métro Tuileries)

A very good selection of literature, fiction, poetry, history, philosophy, art books, politics, Paris guides… “Best Atmosphere” award. Lovely shelves. When you get to the literature section in the back, look up! (Especially nice on a rainy day.) And peek through the glass door into the little office just before the philosophy section — I want to move in there.

[Also, don’t miss their website! There’s a nice little intro, then when you click on Enter you get a little film of the interior. Turn up your speaker volume. It’s a love song to books. The camera caresses the hardwood shelves, reels from the overwhelming selection. As the string section builds, I feel a swoon coming on. I tear up, it is… too much. I must lie in a darkened room for the rest of the afternoon with a cool handkerchief on my forehead. (And I’ve been there a hundred times.) Try not to drool on the keyboard. To the right of the movie is a fascinating history of the shop. Now that’s a pedigree.]

Red Wheelbarrow Bookstore
22, rue St Paul
Paris, 75004
(métro St Paul)

I haven’t been there in years, but I seem to remember they had a good selection.

W.H. Smith
248, rue de Rivoli
Paris, 75001
(métro Concorde)

I am including them for the sake of thoroughness, but not because I like them. It’s a chain bookshop, the staff are usually quite rude and their prices are frequently higher than any of the other new-books bookshops. They are, of course, more mainstream. Their literature section is an embarrassment (for us and them); and to insult further, they keep shuffling the section around the shop to make way for Christmas cards or a monster display of dieting books. Anyhow, I have to admit they do have a larger non-fiction than most and their magazine selection can’t be beat. They even have the National Enquirer for around nine euros. I can’t believe anyone bothered.

Added 7 hours later…

Both new and used books:

The Abbey Bookshop
29, rue de la Parcheminerie
75005 Paris

I haven’t been to this one in ages. All I remember is that it’s a mix of new and used and that the owner is Canadian. So, if you’re desperate for a copy of Canada’s version of the New York Times — known affectionately to its employees as “The Mop and Pail” and to the public at large as “The Globe and Mail” — this is the place for you.

What was I thinking?

This is exactly the kind of book I really dislike: sitcom-style quirky, hyper-verbal, endless prose fireworks to cover the complete lack of substance… I guess I was having a really open-minded day.

The experience of reading this book is similar to that of having a coked-up mensa member cornering you at a party and trying to impress you. For seven hundred and thirty-six pages.

Insult to injury, as the cliché goes, three-quarters of the way through (probably because she didn’t know what else to do) the book suddenly turns into a thriller/murder mystery. Oy vey!

Addendum: I do not understand why people think “New York Times Bestseller” is a good thing to have on the cover of a book. It’s more like a deterrent. Have a gander at the “number 1″ titles for the last 60 years. It’s awash in hack writers. The appearance of a book that’s actually good comes as a bit of a shock.

“Why am I reading this?”

A unfortunate thought to have on page 251 of an 800 page novel. And for the reader to be noticing page numbers…

I knew a kid in high school who used to agonize over reading assignments. He always knew exactly how many pages an assigned book had and what page he was on. He would formulate various complicated mathematical comforts: “I read three eighteenths already. So, nine more pages and I’ll be seven forty-thirds of the way through.”

Then he would put the book between his palms and squeeze hard while peering with one eye (like a mad cockatoo) at the location of the bookmark. Was he aiming for a more accurate assessment of the bookmark’s location? Or was it a physics-defying attempt to will said bookmark closer to the end? Other humans sure are mysteries.

Unfortunately, I can see how someone reading “Human Traces” might be driven to this sort of behavior.

But I digress. (This was supposed to be a mini-review! “Where’s the mini?” you’re probably asking yourself. “Hell, where’s the review?” Well, the review part will be mini. I’m just avoiding it. I’m still uncomfortable saying negative things about live authors.)

Okay, here we go. I picked this book up because of the subject: the early days of psychiatry, Charcot’s lectures, madness… sounded like something I’d quite enjoy. Sadly, not.

I read somewhere that the author spent five years doing research for the historical backdrop of the book. Shame he didn’t put an equal amount of time into the characters. They’re clichéd types without any discernible character arcs.

There’s another problem here that I’m finding in so many modern novels these days. I call it the “chummy effect”. The main characters are all painfully chummy. It’s unearned and unbelievable. Their relationships have no complexity. It’s like bad television. Plus, they all speak in the same voice: they don’t speak from their own history, point of view and agenda. (John Dufresne has a wonderful section on how to write good dialogue in his book: “The Lie That Tells a Truth: A Guide to Writing Fiction”.)

Throughout the whole novel there’s a distinct feeling of putting in time. Like being stuck in traffic. We plod through scene after tiresome scene wherein no one has anything very interesting to say and nothing very interesting happens. Time passes, your fingernails grow, the earth’s magnetic pole shifts ever so slightly to the left.

Then there are the little careless blunders that always make me think the author may in fact be watching television while writing. Things like: “She wiped her hands down the front of her dress…” Two pages ago, the character put on a “plum-coloured silk dress with a tight bodice and a full skirt”. That’s some fancy hand towel!

Another example:

“…managed to extend a yellowish, choreatic hand to the decanter on the sideboard and pour another glassful for the guest.”

Choreatic is in the OED as “archaic, no longer in use”. It refers to St. Vitus’s dance. Would it have killed him to say “shaky”? What is the point of yanking out a word like that here? Maybe if it was in dialogue, used by a doctor. But from the narrator?

The author can produce the occasional pleasing physical description — a hand on the bark of a tree, the smell of dusty upholstery in summer — that feels precise and hypnotically calming. As for “the early days of psychiatry, Charcot’s lectures and madness”, you’d be much better off reading a non-fiction book on the subject. Sadly, “Human Traces” is just time-filler. Plodding, pseudo-literary historical fiction.

Life is too short. (Life is probably too short for this length of amateur book review as well. Thanks for reading to the end!)

Every few years I get it into my head that I should feel bad for not reading more modern fiction.

Beside the computer is a stack of I don’t know how many modern efforts I gave every effort to. Perhaps I chose badly. Perhaps most recent fiction is largely crap. Perhaps I am hopelessly prejudiced against it. Impossible to say which is true, quite possibly, they all are.

Well, one of the cats sent the pile cascading onto the hardwood floor earlier today — thus reducing their resale value due to slightly dinged corners — and I chose to take this as a sign from the gods. Write short reviews and have done with them, say the gods. Who am I to argue? Besides, I’m plain old tired of looking at a huge wobbly heap of disappointments.

So, bunched together or individually,  I’m going to do a series of mini-reviews; then I can trade them in at my favorite second-hand bookshop and get something good.