I'm making a thematic reading list for my six-week stay in Paris this summer. I'm looking forward to sitting in the Palais Royal or the Tuileries reading and writing in the sun.
The books I can think of off the top of my head (some of which I have read before and some of which I have yet to read) that would be particularly good to read in Paris this summer are:
-The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
-The Flaneur by Edmund White
-Nightwood by Djuna Barnes
-Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
-The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
-The Book of Salt by Monique Truong
-related: The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein
-Another Country by James Baldwin
-A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
-All that Alexandre Dumas I've been meaning to read/reread but haven't (Queen Margot, The Vicomte de Bragelonne, Louise de la Vallière)
-Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini
-Perfume by Patrick Süskind
-I also want to read some Colette, and maybe even some stuff by her crazy husband. Any suggestions?
-I found this book called France: A Traveler's Literary Companion. I may try to get my hands on it, or I may not, preferring instead to be my own literary companion.
-My Father's Glory and My Mother's Castle by Marcel Pagnol. Not the best for Paris, but the 'rents were flirting with the idea of going to the south before I have to start work, and that would be perfect.
-??? (<-- This is where you, dear readers, come in. If you have any suggestions, shoot me an e-mail.)