Richmond Public Library: Bastille Day: À La France, Avec Amour

Press release from the Richmond Public Library:

Laura Price

2021-07-14

The friendship between the United States and France spans decades. Generations of Americans have shown their amour for French fashion, food, architecture and people, to name just a few. And the U.S. is still ever so grateful for the Statue of Liberty!

Bastille Day, which takes place on July 14, is France’s Independence Day. If you’ve had the good fortune to be in a Francophone country on Bastille Day, you’ll know that it’s a day-into-night homage to everything French, with food, neighbors, music, and laughter. The tricolore flutters from balconies, windows, streetlamps, and people. When I was in southern France, the festivities included an exquisite lunch, boules, an afternoon nap, then one glass of wine, one beer, une menthe a l’eau turned into another, then another, and before I realized it, the fireworks signaled the end of a day filled with national pride.

Now that travel to France is once again possible, maybe you’ll have a chance to enjoy Bastille Day there yourself. To help you prepare, here are some recommendations from the RPL catalog, à la France, avec amour.

• A Cat Abroad: the further adventures of Norton, the cat who went to Paris, and his human by Peter Gethers
• Chasing Matisse: a year in France living my dream by James Morgan
• How to be Parisian Wherever You Are: love, style and bad habits by Anne Berest
• The Lost King of France: a true story of revolution, revenge and DNA by Deborah Cadbury
• Two Towns in Provence: Map of Another Town and A Considerable Town by M.F.K. Fisher
• French Lessons: adventures with knife, fork and corkscrew by Peter Mayle

• The City of Tears by Kate Mosse
• The Committed by Viet Thanh Nguyen
• Lost in Paris by Elizabeth Thompson
• Off the Wild Coast of Brittany by Juliet Blackwell
• The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles
• The Women of Chateau Lafayette by Stephanie Dray

• Confessions: the Paris Mysteries by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro
• Igniting Darkness by Robin Lafevers
• The Paper Girl of Paris by Jordyn Taylor
• The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang
• Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly
• This Light Between Us by Andrew Xia Fukuda

• The Cat Who Walked Across France by Kate Banks
• Dork Diaries 15: Tales from a Not-So-Posh Paris Adventure by Rachel Renée Russell
• The Giraffe That Walked to Paris by Nancy Milton
• The Invention of Hugo Cabret: a novel in words and pictures by Brian Selznick
• Linnea in Monet’s Garden by Christina Bjork
• Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans
• Mirette on the High Wire by Emily Arnold McCully

This press release was produced by the Richmond Public Library. The views expressed here are the author’s own.