Paris in July 2022
#ParisinJuly
Co-hosted by Readerbuzz and Thyme For Tea
Day 8
La Grande Librairie
Yesterday evening, I watched the 500th episode of La Grande Librairie – you need a VPN to watch this French TV program in its entirety if you do not live in France. But you an watch parts of it on YouTube.
La Grande Librairie is unique and maybe quite characteristic of France: worldwide, it is the ONLY weekly literary program that airs at prime time on a regular TV channel (France 5)!
And each episode lasts around 1H30 minutes!
It actually lasted longer yesterday for two reasons: it was the 500th episode, and it was the last one hosted by François Busnel.
It was created by Busnel in 2008, in the long tradition of radio and then TV literary programs hosted by the remarkable Bernard Pivot (referred to yesterday by Busnel as “the boss”) – he is now 87.
Every week then since 2008, Busnel has been inviting 4 authors or so to talk about a theme, related to their books.
Yesterday, there were MANY authors, and the question was, which book has made you who you are today- more as a person than as an author? Great question in the first place and then the answers were fantastic and broad reaching, from French classics to more recent world literature.
I said it was the last episode hosted by Busnel. Indeed, he recently announced he was no longer going to present the program, but still direct it in the wings, in order to focus on other literary adventures, like for instance producing literary documentaries (he recently did one on Jim Harrison).
La Grande Librairie will restart in September (they always take the Summer off, they are French, remember, lol) and hosted then by Augustin Trapenard, who has also been hosting literary programs on radio.
If you understand French, you can also search on YouTube for La Grande Librairie, or Bernard Pivot, François Busnel, or Augustin Trapenard to listen to great excerpts of their programs.
It was a very emotional episode, with many tributes to Busnel, and as usual, an amazing tribute to reading, to books, to authors, to editors, to booksellers, and to translators – yes, translators were named!!
There are not many things that make me proud of being French, but this is definitely one of them.
ARE THERE SIMILAR LITERARY PROGRAMS
IN YOUR COUNTRY?
Which book has made you who you are today?
Words And Peace 
I wish we had the same cultural interest for such things in this stupid country… 😦
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I know, at least this is one thing the French do well
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The French cultural programming is impressive, and I respect it. But sometimes they overdo the self-congratualations a bit. They know how great they are, and how superior to the stupid Americans. Well, that’s true, but…
best… mae at maefood.blogspot.com
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There was a lot of that yesterday night for sure, more than usual. But it was also a way of honoring the job Busnel has done along the years
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Oh, I wish I’d discovered this when we lived in France. I think I’ll have to go on a YouTube trawl …
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I think you will really enjoy it
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It makes me happy to imagine thousands of people tuning into that show in France and honoring the work done for so many years. It gives me a little hope for the world.
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Amen! Your comment suddenly made me curious. I see the audience goes from 304, 000 people (the lowest, which sounds already pretty good to me) to the highest record: 946,000 viewers – a program in December 2017 on Jean d’Ormesson
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Sounds very interesting. Maybe on youtube you can add an English translation.
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For some videos, you can get automatic translations, and usually it actually gives you a good idea of the content, but the Captions feature is closed on these. There may be another way to do it, especially when you cannot turn Captions ON, but I don’t know how. If someone knows, please tell us!
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Sounds wonderful. One American literary program I’ve enjoyed is the Book Lust podcast by Seattle librarian Nancy Pearl, where she interviews contemporary authors. But I’ve gotten away from listening to podcasts lately, too busy!
I don’t know about the US as a whole but Seattle had a great literary culture when I lived there, with excellent bookstores, librarires, readings, lectures, etc. It’s changed a lot, so I don’t know how it is now…
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Yes, American public libraries do an awesome job (way better than French public libraries!). Not so much on TV, and TV channels available to all.
Yes, there are lots of literary podcasts for sure, from the US and England that I know of, at least.
I have a hard time personally listening to podcasts though, I feel it takes away time I can use to listen to the books themselves.
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How interesting. I will definitely search youtube for that. Thank you so much, Emma.
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You may not have time to read and blog anymore after that, lol – by the way, thanks for adding your blog url to your profile, so easy now to click on it to go visit your place
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No, no, that will never happen.
I have only recently seen that my URL does not appear on some blogs. And on others, I cannot comment at the moment. But I will make sure to add it any time I can.
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your correct url has been showing right under your name, and next to the date of your comment, as it should, for several days now
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that’s because I enter it every time.
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oh wow!
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I hope this glitch will finish soon. I can’t even log in to some other blogs.
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Oh no!
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