You already saw that picture for the previous Photo Challenge, too bad, it would have worked so well for this new Weekly Photo Challenge: Hands

But wait, I have another good one:

This is La chouette, the famous owl in my home city, Dijon, Burgundy, France, downtown.

It is actually on the exterior wall of the church Notre-Dame, rue de la chouette.

Every time you go through this street, you are supposed to go and put your HAND on the owl, and make a wish, for good luck.

As a student before your exams, this is absolutely a MUST!

There is currently a quite rather complicated ritual, with touching another stone animal which is close by with your other hand, and things to say, but I just know the simple version.

Now why “une chouette”/an owl? There are all kinds of symbolical explanations, such as the owl being the symbol of Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom.

But it could also be, according to a local historian, that one of the stone masons of the church was named Chouet, and that would have been his signature. We have similar things on other churches in France.

I had a chock though discovering that a nut case broke it with a hammer about 10 years ago. They fixed it as best they could, but it is so sad to think that someone would want to do this to a Medieval feature – the French Revolution is over for God’s sake.

NB: the owl worked for me, I did pass my Baccalauréat with flying colors.

DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING SIMILAR IN YOUR HOME TOWN,
SOMETHING THAT’S SUPPOSED TO BRING YOU GOOD LUCK?

***

To see other entries for this Weekly Photo Challenge organized by WordPress, or to post your own, please visit this page.

05/19-20/2012

Here are the latest titles added on my Goodreads TBR, I suggest them as the top 5 books for your week-end.

in FICTION:

Farewell, My Queen: A Novel

3.04  ·  rating details  ·  135 ratings  ·  30 reviews

It was once the job of Madame Agathe-Sidonie Laborde to read books aloud to Marie-Antoinette. Now exiled in Vienna, she looks back twenty-one years to the legendary opulence of Versailles and meticulously reconstructs July 14, 15, and 16 of 1789.

When Agathe-Sidonie is summoned to the Queen’s side on the morning of the 14th, Versailles is a miniature universe, sparkling with every outward appearance of happiness and power, peopled with nobles of minutely calibrated rank, and run according to a hundred-year-old ritual called the Perfect Day. But with the shocking news that someone has woken the King in the night, order begins to disintegrate and word of the fall of the Bastille seeps into court. Soon Versailles’s beauty is nothing more than a shell encasing rising panic and chaos. Agathe-Sidonie watches as the Queen’s attempts to flee are aborted; her most intimate friend betrays her; and the King, appearing to sleepwalk through this crisis, never alters his routine of visiting the Apollo Salon several times a day to consult a giant crystal thermometer.

From the tiniest garret to the Hall of Mirrors, where Marie-Antoinette stands alone and terrified in the dark, Chantal Thomas shows us a world on the edge of oblivion and an intimate portrait of the woman who, like “fire in motion,” was its center.

Sacre Bleu: A Comedy d’Art

3.79  ·  rating details  ·  1,144 ratings  ·  330 reviews

Absolutely nothing is sacred to Christopher Moore. The phenomenally popular, New York Times bestselling satirist whom the Atlanta Journal-Constitution calls, “Stephen King with a whoopee cushion and a double-espresso imagination” has already lampooned Shakespeare, San Francisco vampires, marine biologists, Death…even Jesus Christ and Santa Claus! Now, in his latest masterpiece, Sacre Bleu, the immortal Moore takes on the Great French Masters. A magnificent “Comedy d’Art” from the author of Lamb, Fool, and Bite Me, Moore’s Sacre Bleu is part mystery, part history (sort of), part love story, and wholly hilarious as it follows a young baker-painter as he joins the dapper Henri Toulouse-Lautrec on a quest to unravel the mystery behind the supposed “suicide” of Vincent van Gogh.

IN NON-FICTION:

The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci

3.79  ·  rating details  ·  206 ratings  ·  26 reviews

In 1577, the Jesuit Priest Matteo Ricci set out from Italy to bring Christian faith and Western thought to Ming dynasty China. To capture the complex emotional and religious drama of Ricci’s extraordinary life, Jonathan Spence relates his subject’s experiences with several images that Ricci himself created–four images derived from the events in the bible and others from a book on the art of memory that Ricci wrote in Chinese and circulated among members of the Ming dynasty elite. A rich and compelling narrative about a remarkable life, The Memory Palace Of Matteo Ricci is also a significant work of global history, juxtaposing the world of Counter-Reformation Europe with that of Ming China.

Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops

4.20  ·  rating details  ·  71 ratings  ·  27 reviews

From the hugely popular blog, a miscellany of hilarious and peculiar bookshop moments:
‘Can books conduct electricity?’
‘My children are just climbing your bookshelves: that’s ok… isn’t it?’
A John Cleese Twitter question ['What is your pet peeve?'], first sparked the ‘Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops’ blog, which grew over three years into one bookseller’s collection of ridiculous conversations on the shop floor. From ‘Did Beatrix Potter ever write a book about dinosaurs?’ to the hunt for a paperback which could forecast the next year’s weather; and from ‘I’ve forgotten my glasses, please read me the first chapter’ to’Excuse me… is this book edible?’
This full-length collection illustrated by the Brothers McLeod also includes top ‘Weird Things’ from bookshops around the world.

Paris, I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down

3.95  ·  rating details  ·  58 ratings  ·  15 reviews

A self-described Francophile from when he was little, Rosecrans Baldwin always dreamed of living in Paris—drinking le café, eating les croissants, walking in les jardins—so when an opportunity presented itself to work for an advertising agency in Paris, he couldn’t turn it down. Despite the fact that he had no experience in advertising. And despite the fact that he barely spoke French. After an unimaginable amount of red tape and bureaucracy, Rosecrans and his wife packed up their Brooklyn apartment and left the Big Apple for the City of Light. But when they arrived, things were not eactly what Rosecrans remembered from a family vacation when he was nine years old.

Paris, I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down is a nimble comic account of observing the French capital from the inside out. It is an exploration of the Paris of Sarkozy, text-message romances, smoking bans, and a McDonald’s beneath the Louvre—the story of an American who arrives loving Paris all out of proportion, but finds life there to be completely unlike what he expected. Over eighteen months, Rosecrans must rely on his dogged American optimism to get him through some very unromantic situations—at work (writing booklets on how to breast-feed, raise, and nurture children), at home (trying to finish writing his first novel in an apartment surrounded on all sides by construction workers), and at every confusing French dinner party in between. An offbeat update to the expat canon, Paris, I Love You is a book about a young man finding his preconceptions replaced by the oddities of a vigorous, nervy city—which is just what he needs to fall in love with Paris for the second time.

SO WHAT WILL YOU BE READING THIS WEEK-END?

I LOVE FRANCE!

I plan to publish this meme every Thursday.
You can share here about any book
or anything cultural you just discovered related to France, Paris, etc.

Please spread the news on Twitter, Facebook, etc !
Feel free to grab my button,
and link your own post through Mister Linky,
at the bottom of this post.

*******

Last week, I promised you more things from Le Quartier Latin in Paris.

There are of course several gorgeous gardens, such as Le Jardin du Luxembourg:

The Jardin du Luxembourg, or the Luxembourg Gardens, is the second largest public park in Paris^[1] (224,500 m² (22.5 hectares) located in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, France. The park is the garden of the French Senate, which is itself housed in the Luxembourg Palace.

It holds lots of fountains and statues.

And Le Quartier Latin is the neighborhood where famous writers came, wrote, and drank!

I enjoyed reading about the history of different places thanks to plaques; there are many of them now, not only in Paris, but in many cities. Click on the picture to read the text – in French.

And and of course, we had to go and see the famous bookstore Shakespeare And Company, quite a place – and crowded as well.

you can sit…

…or sleep!

If you do not know anything about this bookstore, I recommend these videos: the first one is on George Whitman, the owner for decades, who died last year at age 98.

The second video is on the current owner, Sylvia Beach, George’s own daughter.

The introduction written under each video is worth while reading.

And I can only recommend this website, Open Culture, which published fascinating daily posts.

HAVE YOU BEEN TO SHAKESPEARE AND COMPANY?
WHAT DID YOU LIKE ABOUT THE PLACE?

***

Please if possible
include the title of the book or topic in your link:
name of your blog (name of the book title or topic).
Thanks

Last week-end we had a shock.

We were enjoying the city of Evanston, Illinois, and of course decided to stop at our favorite bookstore: Bookman’s Alley.

Have a look inside and tell me if you would not love that place: books all over,  accompanied with an assortment of various items; there is actually some sort of organization, with a theme per room, and book categories along the shelf. And plenty of chairs here and there.

isn’t this cozy or what?

As I was sitting on a chair and looking at books around me, I overheard a customer saying that they were going to close. I froze and checked with the owner: yes indeed, they are preparing to close, within a month!!!!!!

We decided to buy the complete works of Marcel Proust in 2 volumes, to keep something from this awesome bookstore.

So if you have never seen this amazing place, it’s now or never.

Or if you think you could maybe take it over, rush there, or call Roger – phone number on the business card on top of my post.

Have you also recently experienced the death of a favorite bookstore?
What are your feelings?

]]> http://wordsandpeace.com/2012/05/16/my-favorite-bookstore/feed/ 5 emmac6 Bookman's Alley Logo Bookman's Alley sign Bookman's Alley 00 Bookman's Alley 1 Bookman's Alley 3 Bookman's Alley 4 Bookman's Alley 5 Bookman's Alley 6 Bookman's Alley 7 http://wordsandpeace.com/2012/05/15/weekly-photo-challenge-blue/ http://wordsandpeace.com/2012/05/15/weekly-photo-challenge-blue/#comments Wed, 16 May 2012 03:15:48 +0000 WordsAndPeace http://wordsandpeace.com/?p=2802 ]]>

This week, the Photo Challenge is the color BLUE.

When I saw the statue of King Stanislas in Nancy, France, on the famous plazza named after him, I thought I could do something whimsical with it. So here it is!

Enjoy, and if you want to join the weekly Photo Challenge organized by wordpress, go here.

I LOVE FRANCE!

I plan to publish this meme every Thursday.
You can share here about any book
or anything cultural you just discovered related to France, Paris, etc.

Please spread the news on Twitter, Facebook, etc !
Feel free to grab my button,
and link your own post through Mister Linky,
at the bottom of this post.

*******

Strolling recently in the Quartier Latin, I stumbled upon a few interesting buildings. That might give you some ideas if you plan to study abroad, or just want to enjoy a walk in Paris.

But first, what is this Quartier Latin?

The Latin Quarter of Paris (French: Quartier latin, IPA: [kaʁtje latɛ̃]) is an area in the 5th and parts of the 6th arrondissement of Paris. It is situated on the left bank of the Seine, around the Sorbonne.

Known for its student life, lively atmosphere and bistros, the Latin Quarter is the home to a number of higher education establishments besides the university itself, such as the École Normale Supérieure, the École des Mines de Paris (a ParisTech institute), the Schola Cantorum, and the Jussieu university campus. Other establishments such as the École Polytechnique (also a ParisTech engineering school) have relocated in recent times to more spacious settings.

The area gets its name from the Latin language, which was once widely spoken in and around the University since Latin was the international language of learning in the Middle Ages. [wikipedia].

Here is a flavor of the neighborhood:

Relaxing, stopping at a terrasse and have some crêpes, while listening to music, or watching vélibs go by – what best way of enjoying Paris?

But OK, I was talking about studying…

Here are a few famous buildings, starting of course with La Sorbonne:

La Sorbonne has been the historical house of the former University of Paris. Nowadays, it houses several higher education and research institutions such as Panthéon-Sorbonne University, Sorbonne Nouvelle University, Paris-Sorbonne University, Paris Descartes University, the École Nationale des Chartes and the École pratique des hautes études.

The name is derived from the Collège de Sorbonne, founded in 1257 by Robert de Sorbon as one of the first significant colleges of the medieval University of Paris.^[1][2] The university as such predates the college by about a century, and minor colleges had been founded already in the late 12th century. During the 16th century, the Sorbonne became a focal point of the intellectual struggle between Catholics and Protestants. The University served as a major stronghold of Catholic conservative attitudes, and as such conducted a bitter struggle against king Francis I’s policy of relative tolerance towards the French Protestants – except for a brief period in 1533 when the University was placed under Protestant control.

The Collège de Sorbonne was suppressed during the French revolution, reopened by Napoleon in 1808 and finally closed in 1882. This was only one of the many colleges of the University of Paris that existed until the French revolution. [wikipedia]

I then had the joy to discover le collège des Bernardins or Collège Saint-Bernard, established by the Cistercians in the first half of the 13th century, when they started falling into the influence of the university mentality of the time, and desired to send their own monks study theology in Paris, instead of forming them at the monastery, as it had always been done for all the monks of that order before.

Well, sounds like after talking about the Cistercians, I need to talk about the ever present Benedictines of the time, with the prestigious abbey of Cluny.

Opposite the piazza in front of La Sorbonne is the Thermes et hôtel de Cluny, which is now the location of  Le musée national du Moyen Âge. The building also dates from the first half of the 13th century – abbots of Cluny would come there when necessary.

There are many more things to see in Le Quartier Latin, but that will be for another stroll next week.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE BUILDING OR PLACE
IN THE QUARTIER LATIN?

***

Please if possible
include the title of the book or topic in your link:
name of your blog (name of the book title or topic).
Thanks

One Woman’s Journey

Among the People of the Rainforest

by

Mary Jo McCONAHAY

251 pages

Published by Chicago Review Press in 2011

Maya Roads counts for the following Challenges:

MY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS BOOK

The 52 countries reading challenge is certainly the best thing that has been happening to my reading life in 2012: so many books or countries I would not have read about. With Maya Roads, I went to Guatemala, or I accompanied the author as she visited and revisited the country in the span of a few decades.

Maya Roads is a very enriching book, full of the passion of the author for the beauty of the landscape and the people, different and hospitable; and for its rich history and archeology. But it is also a very realistic book about what has happened to Guatemala in more recent years through unfortunate and devastating American influence at all kinds of military, political, and economic levels, all basically ending up in ruining a country, destroying its patrimony and the richness of its local cultures.

There were also interesting details about the famous Mayan calendar, so popular these days, as we reach the end of one of its cycle on Dec 21, 2012.

WHAT IS IT ABOUT

In Maya Roads, McConahay draws upon her three decades of traveling and living in Central America’s remote landscapes to create a fascinating chronicle of the people, politics, archaeology, and species of the Central American rainforest, the cradle of Maya civilization. Captivated by the magnificence and mystery of the jungle, the author brings to life the intense beauty, the fantastic locales, the ancient ruins, and the horrific violence. She witnesses archaeological discoveries, the transformation of the Lacandon people, the Zapatista indigenous uprising in Mexico, increased drug trafficking, and assists in the uncovering of a war crime. Over the decades, McConahay has witnessed great changes in the region, and this is a unique tale of a woman’s adventure and the adaptation and resolve of a people.  [Chicago Review Press ]

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 Writer and journalist Mary Jo McConahay watches the globe, near and far. She co-produced and co-directed the documentary, Crimebuster, A Son’s Search for His Father, and co-produced the award-winning PBS documentary, Discovering Dominga, writing its original story. Her reporting has appeared in Time, Newsweek, Vogue, Rolling Stone, Ms., Salon, Sierra, Los Angeles Times Magazine, Parenting, The Progressive, National Catholic Reporter, and more than two dozen other magazines and periodicals. GlobeWatch continues McConahay’s column by the same name, formerly published by Pacific News Service and New America Media. Follow me on FaceBook [from her website]

REVIEWS BY OTHERS

“A layered examination of a place and a people whose ancient culture is rapidly disappearing.” —Kirkus

HAVE YOU READ Maya Roads YET?
DO YOU FEEL LIKE READING THIS BOOK?
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS  IN A COMMENT PLEASE

by

Thor HEYERDAHL

308 pages

Published  by Adler & Adler Publishers in 1986

This book counts for the following challenges:

MY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS BOOK

I had a hard time finding a book on the Maldive Islands, for the South Asian Challenge. Apart from tourist guides, my local library had basically only The Maldive Mystery. But that was also a great opportunity to finally read something by Heyerdahl.

I know he is sometimes criticized, and I understand, as I felt frustrated sometimes by repetitions in this book, and mostly because at the end of the book, I never got the real final answer that seemed to be originally promised.

Nevertheless, I found The Maldive Mystery very interesting: invited by the government of the Maldive Islands, Heyerdahl organizes archeological diggings to try to identify where the first inhabitants of these islands were coming from. I know absolutely nothing of these islands, so that was a nice foray in the region and its history.

Heyerdahl’s maritime expertise did help him identify the areas where digging would prove most fruitful.

WHAT IS IT ABOUT

When the Maldive Islanders converted to Islam in the 12th century, they discarded or destroyed all traces of earlier cultures, thus denying their past. Recent archeological discoveries prompted the government to invite Heyerdahl to examine the artifacts and attempt a reconstruction of pre-Islamic history. Located in the Indian Ocean southwest of India and west of Sri Lanka, the Maldives encompass two broad, reefless sea passages (“One-and-Half” and Equatorial Channels) well-known to ancient mariners. Heyerdahl, an authority on primitive sea travel (Kon-Tiki, The Ra Expeditions, unravels a mystery that reaches into the vanished civilizations of Sumer and the Indus Valley. The Maldivan artifacts showed that temples were built around A.D. 550; that the original settlers had been sun-worshipers. An important export of the Maldives in ancient times was cowrie shells, found only in the Islands and used as money, these shells were unearthed in pre-Viking tombs (A.D. 550800) in Sweden!  [Publishers Weekly]

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Thor Heyerdahl (October 6, 1914, Larvik, Norway – April 18, 2002, Colla Micheri, Italy) was a Norwegian ethnographer and adventurer with a scientific background in zoology and geography. Heyerdahl became notable for his Kon-Tiki expedition, in which he sailed 4,300 miles (8,000 km) by raft from South America to the Tuamotu Islands. All his legendary expeditions are shown in the Kon-Tiki Museum, Oslo.

Thor Heyerdahl was born in Larvik, the son of master brewer Thor Heyerdahl and his wife Alison Lyng. As a young child, Thor Heyerdahl showed a strong interest in zoology. He created a small museum in his childhood home, with a Vipera berus as the main attraction. He studied Zoology and Geography at University of Oslo. At the same time, he privately studied Polynesian culture and history, consulting what was then the world’s largest private collection of books and papers on Polynesia, owned by Bjarne Kropelien, a wealthy wine merchant in Oslo. This collection was later purchased by the University of Oslo Library from Kropelien’s heirs and was attached to the Kon-Tiki Museum research department. After seven terms and consultations with experts in Berlin, a project was developed and sponsored by his zoology professors, Kristine Bonnevie and Hjalmar Broch. He was to visit some isolated Pacific island groups and study how the local animals had found their way there. Just before sailing together to the Marquesas Islands in 1936, he married his first wife, Liv Coucheron-Torp (b. 1916), whom he had met shortly before enrolling at the University, and who had studied economics there. Though she is conspicuously absent from many of his papers and talks, Liv participated in nearly all of Thor’s journeys, with the exception of the Kon-Tiki Expedition. The couple had two sons; Thor Jr and Bjørn. The marriage ended in divorce and in 1949 Thor Heyerdahl married Yvonne Dedekam-Simonsen. They in turn had three daughters; Annette, Marian and Helene Elisabeth. This marriage also ended in divorce, in 1969. In 1991 Thor Heyerdahl married for the third time, to Jacqueline Beer (b. 1932).

Thor Heyerdahl’s grandson, Olav Heyerdahl, retraced his grandfather’s Kon-Tiki voyage in 2006, as part of a six-member crew. The voyage, called the Tangaroa Expedition, was intended as a tribute to Thor Heyerdahl, as well as a means to monitor the Pacific Ocean’s environment. A film about the voyage is in preparation.  [goodreads]

HAVE YOU READ The Maldive Mystery YET?
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT HEYERDAHL’S BOOKS?
DO YOU FEEL LIKE READING THIS BOOK?
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS  IN A COMMENT PLEASE

Sometimes I hate myself for taking blurred pictures, and using strong zooms tend to do this on my camera, but I kept this ine, as I thought it did a nice effect with the light which is so powerful in this Medieval abbey of Fontenay, in Burgundy, not far from Dijon.

It was founded by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux in 1118, and built in the Romanesque style. It is one of the oldest and most complete Cistercian abbeys in Europe, and became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981. Of the original complex comprising church, dormitory, cloister, chapter house, caldarium, refectory, dovecote and forge, all remain intact except the refectory. are well maintained. The Abbey of Fontenay, along with other Cistercian abbeys, forms a connecting link between Romanesque and Gothic architectures.

Here is the beautiful website of Fontenay abbey, if you wish to know more about it.

***

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