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Patricia Sands

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Ted Jones

Reading suggestions for our 2017 France tour

April 15, 2017 by Patricia Sands 5 Comments

If it’s Friday, it must be France …

 

 

Our 2017 women’s tour of Provence is just weeks away! I know the time will fly by and can’t wait to greet the sixteen women when they arrive in Nice on June 6. Our beautiful Hotel Beau Rivage, is just out of this photo to the left. The vieille ville (old town) and colourful daily market are located there as well, footsteps away. So this will be our ‘neighbourhood’ for six days before we move on to Avignon for another six days of exploring the countryside of pastoral Provence. Lavender will be in bloom!

One of the great features of this tour is that we only move once. From our base hotels, we have wonderful day trips with well-trained guides and bus drivers. My friend, author Susan Sommers, and I are along to ensure that everyone is happy and organized every day. We have the best time!

I recently sent some reading suggestions to the group in advance of their arrival in France and I thought I would share the books with you too. You may well be familiar with the titles as they are favourites of mine that I frequently recommend. Enjoy!

 

Click here for Kristi’s book.

Click here for Ted’s book.

Click here for Anne-Marie’s book.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you love the south of France like I do, you would enjoy reading all of these books too.

Of course, #PeterMayle is the writer who began it all … back in 1991! Click here for A Year In Provence.

Whether you are preparing to visit France or not, you will find hours of reading pleasure in these books!

 

 

Of course we’ll be visiting many of the beautiful locations written about in the Love in Provence series. Most of the women on our tours have read the stories of Katherine’s adventure in France and it’s great fun to experience their enthusiasm as we visit the special places they have discovered in the books. Antibes is a highlight!

 

 

Where have you taken vacations in books? And did you actually visit those places at another time? 

 

 

 

Joyeuses Pâques~Happy Easter~Chag Sameach~Passover Wishes ~ et bon weekend to all???

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Filed Under: Blog, France, General Travel, If it is France..., Uncategorized, Writing Tagged With: Anne-Marie Simons, books, France, Kristin Espinasse, Love In Provence, Patricia Sands, Peter Mayle, Provence, Susan Sommers, Ted Jones, travel

Fangirl moment …

September 20, 2013 by Patricia Sands Leave a Comment

If it’s Friday, it must be France … Really? It’s Friday again? So soon? It’s been a busy, wonderful week in Nice (with the usual side trips that are so easy to do here …) but somehow I’ve even managed to get in some work on my WIP. * doing a happy dance* We’ve got an early train to catch to Toulon and then a quick ferry ride to beautiful Saint Mandrier tomorrow to visit friends for the weekend. So this will be brief! I just wanted to share my total fan-girl … okay, but fan- lady  just doesn’t have the same ring … moment with you. After spending the day in Antibes – and it was SO good to be back there – catching up with Heidi at the Bookshop and Julie and Victor at Choopy’s and good friend Antonia, my DH and I hopped on the train back to Nice to meet up for an apèro with Ted and Joan Jones. Ted is the author of The French Riviera ~ A Literary Guide For Travellers. If you spend time in this part of the world, you need to have this book with you.  Trust me!  Click here for a post all about the book that I wrote when we were staying Antibes two years ago. All I want to say right now is that it was a distinct pleasure to meet Ted, at long last, and Joan as well! I even got his autograph!

Meeting Ted Jones!
Meeting Ted Jones!

What are you up to?  Bon weekend!

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Filed Under: Author Promotion, Blog, France, If it is France... Tagged With: Antibes, Choopy's Cupcakes and Coffee Shop, France, Heidi's English Bookshop, Nice, Patricia Sands, Saint Mandrier, Ted Jones, The French Riviera A Literary Guide for Travellers, The Promise of Provence, Toulon

Literature, Lunch and Lavender – part one

July 29, 2011 by Patricia Sands Leave a Comment

If it’s Friday, it must be France …

Talk about a good story! The literary history along the south coast of France is tough to match.

Poets and scribes from the Roman Empire told of the beauty of Antipolis, now Antibes. In later centuries writers began visiting the Riviera for the beauty, the sea,  the solitude or the company of other writers, as far back as the Italian poet Dante Alighieri  in the 13th century. Petrarch, John Milton and Michel Nostradamus were just some of the earlier men of letters who created their timeless works along this coast.

Tobias Smollett penned what is considered the first “travel” book for this area in 1763. Nietsche found inspiration in the 1880’s for some of his work as he walked the ancient donkey and goat paths here (see my earlier post). In the 1920’s F. Scott Fitzgerald was among those writers who ushered the Jazz Age to the area. In the 1980’s, Graham Greene wrote J’Accuse, opening up investigations into organized crime and politics in the area. Most came for inspiration. Others came to seek the fabulous weather and local colour, to gamble, to escape taxes or social ostracism.

The trend continues as witnessed by the “Local Authors” table in Heidi’s English Bookshop  from my post last Friday. I’ve already had the pleasure of meeting one of the writers in that group, Patty Knight from Boston. She writes under the pen name of Adora Bennett for Genesis Press and comes to Antibes for inspiration whenever it’s possible. I’m looking forward to meeting many of the others. Whether a writer with an established name or a fresh voice on the scene, the search for inspiration here is never ending.

Named for one of Antibes’ most revered sons , the Prix Jacques Audiberti de la Ville d’Antibes, worth 50,000 francs to the laureate,  honours a writer with a special interest in the Mediterranean.

Ted Jones, a British freelance writer, who lives in the south of France has written The French Riviera: A Literary Guide for Travellers. It’s an informed and entertaining book covering writers from  Graham Greene and W. Somerset Maugham who lived here,  to those writers whose work this area dominates, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Guy de Maupassant, to those who simply lingered there. His comprehensive work covers them all, including: Louisa M. Alcott, Hans Christian Andersen, J.G. Ballard, Simone de Beauvoir, Bertholt Brecht, Albert Camus, Casanova, Bruce Chatwin, Joseph Conrad, Charles Dickens, Vladimir Nabakov, T.S. Eliot, Andre Gide,  Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, Victor Hugo, James Joyce,and countless others. Not only do you get the buzz on the authors and how they lived and were inspired here, it’s also an excellent travel guide to the area.

Albert Camus, who spent many years living in Le Cannett, once said: “Writers come here for the easy life but the beauty of the Côte inspires them to new literary heights!”

To experience the literary Riviera read what Ted Jones has to say and then go back to the books of these great authors.

We’ve rented a car for the day so better hit the road … so many places, so little time. I’ll save the Lunch and Lavender parts for next Friday.

What inspires you? Have you read many novels set on the Côte D’Azur? If you have a favourite, I would love to hear about it!

À bientôt!

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Filed Under: Blog, France, If it is France... Tagged With: 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Finalist, Adora Bennett, ForeWord 2010 Book Of The Year Finalist, French Riviera, Genesis Press, literary guide to the french riviera, Patricia Sands, Patty Knight, Ted Jones, The Bridge Club, the power of friendship, Travel on the Cote D'Azur, writers on the Cote D'Azur

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