A Year in Provence

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by Peter Mayle | Travel | This book has not been rated.
ISBN: 0140296034 Global Overview for this book
Registered by Call-Me-Ishmael of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania USA on 11/5/2010
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2 journalers for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by Call-Me-Ishmael from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania USA on Friday, November 19, 2010
Peter Mayle paints a picture of his anything but boring retirement to the south of France in his classic “A Year in Provence”. This book is my “go to” book when it’s rainy and cold and I want to laugh. The months serve as orderly chapter titles, but the French do things differently than the English so “the year began with lunch” instead of January. Followed by dinner, dessert and of course wine! With Mayle's delicious descriptions you can taste the food, smell the wine and know the characters like your own neighbors. If you love crisp, creative use of language, you will love this book and the 4 or 5 that followed it.

From “A Year in Provence.”

On the French language:

The language spoken was French, but it was not the French we had studied in textbooks and heard on cassettes; it was a rich soupy patois, emanating from somewhere at the back of the throat and passing through a scrambling process in the nasal passages before coming out as speech. Half familiar sounds could be dimly recognized as words through the swirls and eddies of Provencal: ‘demain’ became ‘demang’, ‘vin’ became ‘vang’, ‘maison’ became ‘mesong’. That by itself would not have been a problem had the words been spoken at normal conversational speed and without further embroidery, but they were delivered like bullets from a machine gun, often with an extra vowel tacked on to the end for good luck. Thus an offer for more bread – page-one stuff in French for beginners – emerged as a single twanging question. ‘Encoredupanga?’

Journal Entry 2 by starkravingmad at Paoli, Pennsylvania USA on Saturday, May 7, 2011
Still reading, but loving it so far!

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