Book Review: Five Nights in Paris by John Baxter

Disclosure / Disclaimer: I received this ebook, free of charge, from Harper Perennial, via Edelweiss. for review purposes on this blog. No other compensation, monetary or in kind, has been received or implied for this post. Nor was I told how to post about it

If it seems like there are a lot of book reviews this month, it is because Spring Publishing season is here and there are SO many great books to share with you! March will be equally hectic! So be warned, your ereader may get full with all the books you start adding from your wish list!

Synopsis:

The preeminent expat writer on Paris and author of The Most Beautiful Walk in the World takes you on an unforgettable nocturnal stroll through five iconic Parisian neighborhoods and his own memories.

John Baxter enchanted readers with his literary tour of Paris in The Most Beautiful Walk in the World.Now, this expat who has lived in the City of Light for more than twenty years introduces you to the city’s streets after dark, revealing hidden treasures and unexpected delights.

As he takes you through five of the city’s greatest neighborhoods—Montmartre, Montparnasse, the Marais, and more—Baxter shares pithy anecdotes about his life in France, as well as fascinating knowledge he has gleaned from leading literary tours of the city by dark. With Baxter as your guide, you will discover the City of Light as never before, walking in the ghostly footsteps of Marcel Proust, the quintessential night owl for whom memory was more vivid than reality; Hungarian photographer Gyula Halász, known as Brassai, who prowled the midnight streets, camera in hand, with his friend Henry Miller; Louis Aragon and Philippe Soupault, who shared the Surrealists’ taste for the city’s shadowed, secret world; and Josephine Baker and other African-American performers who dazzled adventurous Parisians at late-night jazz clubs.

A feast for the mind and the senses, Five Nights in Paris takes you through the haunts of Paris’s most storied artists and writers to the scenes of its most infamous crimes in a lively off-the-beaten-path tour not found in any guidebook.

Review:

Subtitled After Dark in the City of Light, this book was begun on the premise of walking tours after dark., Where would you start, what should be included, is Paris after dark different, do you approach Paris with different senses after dark? And while Baxter may not have started the walking tours in actuality, what he proposed will ignite your senses! The book is part love affair with Paris, part local's take on a city, part historical record, and mostly an unique way to share everything Baxter loves about Paris in a new and different way!

I have not read any of Baxter's previous books, but after reading this one, I do want to read the rest! He has a way of drawing the reader in, and making you feel as if you are there with him, having coffee proposing these walks, and then walking them with him. It is pretty apropos to have this book come out in the Spring, as it is a true love letter to the city and its history, from Baxter and to us, the reader. The book will make you want to fly to Paris and experience, as he suggests, with the 5 senses, to truly understand what makes the city unique.

If you love Paris, love books about the city, love travel books, or books that will make you rethink traveling, check out this book. It would make an excellent gift as well!

About the Author:

John Baxter has lived in Paris for more than twenty years. He is the author of four acclaimed memoirs about his life in France: The Perfect Meal: In Search of the Lost Tastes of France; The Most Beautiful Walk in the World: A Pedestrian in Paris; Immoveable Feast: A Paris Christmas; and We'll Always Have Paris: Sex and Love in the City of Light. Baxter, who gives literary walking tours through Paris, is also a film critic and biographer whose subjects have included the directors Fellini, Kubrick, Woody Allen, and most recently, Josef von Sternberg. Born in Australia, he lives with his wife and daughter in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighborhood, in the same building Sylvia Beach called home.