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Good morning, Goodreaders: this is just a quick update to let you know that my weekly Paris reading recs have now moved over to my website, liamcallanan.com, where you can find them on this . I also tweet about them with the hashtag, . Thanks for reading.

it's hard not to resort to French phrases -- like tour de force -- when describing Diane Johnson's novel, Le Divorce, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year.

A bestseller when it came out, it later spawned a movie (which I've not seen and would not like to) and a sequel (which I've not read and would like to). But this novel is more than meal enough, and for readers who are also writers it's a master class in how to manage a massive cast, complicated plot, and perhaps the most delicately difficult task of all, French manners, customs and language with élan.

The novel is narrated by the ever-game Isabel, a USC film school dropout who's come to Paris to help her stepsister Roxy, who is pregnant, and, we soon discover, on the doorstep of a divorce. Entanglements, which include a tussle over a valuable painting, ensue.

The book is often described a comedy of manners -- and it does fit that genre -- comedy, check, manners, check -- but surprisingly, there's also a fair amount of blood spilled in the end. (Not blood on the level of say, The Shining, the screenplay of which Johnson co-wrote, but still: blood, and some mild mayhem.)

But there are also a pleasing number of sumptuous meals, passionate trysts, and the occasional advice to the reader on how to navigate French (pronouncing coup de grace correctly, a character quietly explains, requires enunciating the second c: koo de grahss, not koo de grah).

Johnson lives, or lived, part of the year in Paris and wrote a lovely book about that experience as well, which I'll hope to dive into in a future post.

More than a decade after its publication in the US, Irène Némirovsky's SUITE FRANÇAISE is perhaps known better today for the story about the book came to be than the story it tells. That's a shame, for the story it tells is extraordinary, but understandable, for the story of how it came to be told is extraordinary too.

It's a novel of France, of the early years of World War II, written by an author, Irène Némirovsky, as she lived through it. The "suite" refers to the five novellas she planned; only "Storm in June" and "Dolce" appear in this volume, though, because those were the only ones she had time to write before she was taken to Auschwitz. She died there in 1942, at the age of 39, of what was reported as "the flu."

Stuffed into a suitcase her daughters inherited, the manuscript went unread for decades. Indeed, her daughters were unaware it was a novel at all until decades later, when, having to decided to turn it over to an organization 'dedicated to documenting memories of the war,' the younger daughter, Denise Epstein, began to type it up and discovered what was really there.

And that was a masterpiece. The first novella, "Storm in June", depicts the arrival of the Germans; the second, "Dolce", the strange eye-of-the-storm calm that obtains once the Germans have taken charge.

These are war stories, in other words, but of the homefront--of very real people, their very real foibles, their inability to understand what's coming. As remarkable as Némirovsky's spare depictions of them, though, is the feat itself--she writes with a haunted, knowing air, as though she were writing this ages hence. But given how much she accomplished in such a short time, she could only have written this with the benefit of a few weeks' reflection--months at most.

Given the context, the stakes, the history, it may seem odd to conclude this note talking about a cat. But I can't not, precisely because of those stakes: Némirovsky not only gives the family cat an unsettling cameo in the book's opening pages, she later hands over an entire chapter to his point of view. The result is not cloying or cute nor in any way sweet. It's extremely real, moving, and by the time you reach the end of chapter 20 of "Storm in June," merciless.

Please read Monique Truong's THE BOOK OF SALT. Or, rather, re-read it, because if you're any kind of a good reader -- and who else is on Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ? -- you read this back when it first came out in 2003. And if so, you don't need me to re-describe or re-recommend it to you. But I will. It's extraordinary, and all the more so for being one of those books that only gets better each time you re-read it.

It's 1934. The narrator, Bình, is 26 and in Paris, far from his home in Vietnam. Employed as a cook for Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Bình weaves a story that wanders back and forth in time, across decades and continents, and, of course, one meal to the next. At the opening of the book, he's seeing the two women off -- "my mesdames" as he forever calls them -- as they sail to America for what will be a successful Stein lecture tour. At the end of the book, after many forays through other parts of Bình's life, we're back at that dock, wondering once more if -- or where -- Bình will sail.

This is not: a book of recipes, a fictionalized tell-all of Stein's Paris days, a romanticized look at Saigon--or Paris, for that matter. What it is instead is a headlong rush of lyricism that frequently reminded me of another book I love, and one that came out just 11 years before, Toni Morrison's JAZZ. It's not a perfect comparison, but I won't back down, in part b/c THE BOOK OF SALT doesn't. Both narrators see all, know all -- Morrison's, of course, is quite different, slyly, technically -- and both surround, if not swarm the stories they're telling. And both voices -- and authors -- needless to say, possess all kinds of authority. When THE BOOK OF SALT tells me how Toklas preferred her pré-salé lamb -- utterly unadorned, flavored only by the seawater saturated grasses it fed on -- I believe every last morsel of it.

I have a weakness for used books--what reader doesn't?--and a debilitating weakness for used books about Paris: if I see one, it will not go unbought.

I picked up the Guilmin Guide: PARIS SEEN IN FOUR DAYS a few years ago at a church rummage sale. It cost a quarter, maybe less, and I almost vibrated as I bought it, certain that I was, for all intents and purposes, stealing this (and from a church no less): 25 cents!

It's undated, but its reference to Paris' population as 2,906,472 led me to Google which led me to date the book as having been published in 1921 or thereabouts.

Ninety-six years and it shows its age, but, curiously, not as much age as you'd expect for a document that someone actually did use for four days in Paris, tearing it in and out of a pocket to read about this edifice or that (on the Eiffel Tower: "...its unquestionable use for the transmission of wireless telegrams and the usefulness of this high monument as an observation station during the war have consecrated its glory").

Further evidence of unuse: its delicate, folded, massive four color map (red, yellow, green, black), which, given its lack of tears or holes, could never possibly have been opened on a crowded street corner in Paris, not in 1921 or any decade since (when Paris' population actually shrunk).

One of the things that fascinates me most about Paris is how much it is powered by myth and how much tourists power that myth -- and how few of those tourists ever actually get a chance to visit, except in the pages of books, like the ones I've been tagging in this series, or tinted maps like the ones tucked into this book. John Updike once said of New York something along the lines of, "I'm glad New Yorkers live there, so that I don't have to", suggesting (at least to me) the role some cities have in our minds: a mythic place we need to exist, and whose continued existence we entrust, wistfully or gratefully, to others.

I suppose the sight of an underused Paris guidebook might make someone sad, but I can't see it that way. What I see is a guidebook that once allowed someone to go to Paris without going -- which, after dropping my daughter off at school this morning in Milwaukee, is precisely what I did. $1,300 if I'd made the trip to Paris this morning by plane, Google tells me, and I went for 25 cents. A steal.

(Curious what it looks like? )

Here's to serendipity. Two artists born in Germany find each other in Brazil, marry, and then settle in Paris, only to be chased away by war. They travel to the US, but not before a harrowing escape accomplished on bike, train and foot, through France, Spain and Portugal -- and another brief stop in Rio.

And you thought Curious George was all about the Man in the Yellow Hat.

Here's to some serendipity of my own: in Cambridge recently with a college-touring daughter, I discovered that Curious George has his own off Harvard Square. We ducked in, eager to escape talk of SAT scores and GPAs, and the store afforded us the exact respite we needed. I idly flipped through the books--as the record reflects, I'm more Team Bemelmans person than Team Rey (Margret and HA Rey produced the Curious George Books), but then I found this book: The Journey that Saved Curious George. I couldn't put it down. I still can't. It's a remarkable achievement: written and illustrated for kids, but absolutely engrossing for adults. True, it's not strictly a Paris story--but this is not a strict blog series--but it's an incredible story nonetheless. It's extraordinarily well-researched and written, and each page flops open like one from a long-lost scrapbook. Who knew the Reys once owned Marmosets in Brazil -- which, tragically, didn't survive their trip to Europe, even after Margret knitted sweaters for them?

In Paris, they kept turtles, and...to say more would spoil the many cliffhangers of this story (which is safe to read to younger kids, but does indeed have its dark moments).

It's always true that beneath every page of a book lie so many more layers of creation than a reader could ever guess at -- but in this case, that includes several continents, too. Buy the book, read it, and then head back to the Curious George volumes on your shelf and see if you're not curious how such sunny volumes could have emerged from such a dark time.

The Little Bookroom Guide to Paris with Children: Play, Eat, Shop, Stay

The publishers of PARIS WITH CHILDREN didn't add a question mark to the title, though they easily could have: any parent who's ever wondered about bringing children there has wondered, really?

My wife and I have had the great good fortune to do so several times, and my answer is: yes. It's also the answer of this guidebook-but-that's-too-belittling-a-name-for-it book. Thoughtful, thorough, and above all, well-written, it's a book that doesn't talk down to parents--or children. It's also incredibly smart. Those first jet-lagged days in Paris? Spend some time in the museums--but in the evenings (many have special evening hours). Your children's circadian rhythms will leave them livelier at that hour and the museums themselves will be comparatively empty.

I confess that our own first trip to Paris we did not have this book--we, um, used children's books instead, an experiment that led to an article and later a book (see liamcallanan.com). But we've used this book ever since, even now that our children are grown. (Because even grown children need to know where to find a bathroom in any given arondissement tout suite.)

It's also beautifully illustrated and perfectly packable.

I know: I sound giddy about this book, and that's hard to square with the more serious tone of some of the other posts in my series here. But I believe in a Paris that mixes fun and serious--and I believe in exposing kids to that kind of Paris too, as early as you're able.

Catherine Sanderson's Petite Anglaise grew out of an anonymous blog she maintained about her life in Paris. It was fun and sexy and humorously self-effacing: she was an enormously good sport through many misadventures, dating and otherwise. But her employers proved not to be good sports; once she was revealed to the author of the blog, she was fired. Though the French courts later sided with her, it can't have been a pleasant outcome for a woman who'd dreamed of living in Paris since she was a little girl.

But one outcome was pleasant--this lovely, unassuming memoir. It gets compared to a real-life Bridget Jones Diary, and while I can see why, it's also more fun -- and more dark -- that Ms. Jones. Sanderson's various decisions in love, in life, have real costs, and some of them prove substantial.

One of her loves--arguably her chief love--that endures is Paris. Hers is smart and chic but also flinty and real.

Which is much like the author herself. Though she no longer blogs, you can peek in on the old one at , and you'll find that after this memoir and a novel--and two kids--she decided to head back to an office job. It may not be the kind of happy ending readers cheer for--but it's also a very honest one. And who's to say more books won't someday arrive? I hope they do.

My local bookstore, Boswell Books, has the best-curated bargain table in the country. (Argue if you want--you should, actually. I side with Calvin Trillin's dictum that the definition of a wimp is someone who doesn't believe his hometown makes the best hamburger in America. Swap bookstore for burger, and that's me.) It may just be that they've come to know 1) my taste and 2) my weakness, which is to always buy something.

Today, it was nothing about burgers, but rather, MEET PARIS OYSTER. This is a lighter book than others on my Paris bookshelf in several respects -- it's just 140-odd pages in a small trim size -- by the author of FRENCH WOMEN DON'T GET FAT. The prose is informal...and contains many, many ellipses of the handwaving variety: "And then there are the oysters...zee best."

Still the book itself is beautifully done, and the story -- of Paris' passion for oysters and the passion of the author, Mireille Guiliano, for one oyster bar, or huîterie, in particular, Huîterie Régis. Located at 3 rue de Montfaucon in the 6th, opposite (in every way) a Chipotle on the rue de Montfaucon, the restaurant is tiny, and to hear Guiliano describe it, exquisite.

There's oyster history here, some recipes, rumors, and a taxonomy of taste. As is the case with oysters themselves, if you're a fan, this will go down very easily.

Some years ago--long enough that iPhones were not a thing but PDAs (personal digital assistants) were--I left a Palm Pilot in a cab in New York. I'd left it because I'd just giddily emerged from the first publisher's meeting about my first novel. I don't know where the expression cloud 9 comes from, but if there is such a thing, I was on cloud 10.

And then I realized I'd lost my PalmPilot. It wasn't quite the disaster of losing one's smartphone today, but it did have a lot of information on it, it was expensive, and I felt like an idiot.

The next day, I got an email from my editor. Someone had found my Palm Pilot in the cab. They'd looked at my calendar (again, this was so far back in time I didn't even have a passcode lock on the device), saw that I'd had a meeting and whom I had it with, looked up the phone number, made the call -- I had it back the next day. I chalked it up to the magic of that whole first-book experience.

Antoine Laurain's THE RED NOTEBOOK is filled with similar magic (albeit much more charmingly told). Bookseller Laurent finds a lost purse, and gradually pores through it to piece together a picture of whose bag it was -- and how he might get it back to her.

The secret here is a light touch. Laurain never overplays his hand; at times, the book almost plays like a fairy tale. But not a kids' tale -- the stakes are real, and so is his Paris. It's a challenge to capture the city in a way that's both charming and serious, and Laurain does it deftly here.

With THE PORTRAIT just out, I can't wait to read on...The Portrait