Lisa

Rosa Bonheur Book Event at the Book Room

Event! To conclude the 2022 celebrations of our namesake Rosa Bonheur's bicentennial Bill & Rosa's Book Room is hosting award-winning historical novelist Natacha Henry on December 3rd at 4pm. Ms Henry will present her book THE FRENCH PAINTER AND THE AMERICAN SHOWMAN: THE UNLIKELY FRIENDSHIP OF ROSA BONHEUR AND BUFFALO BILL. This historical novel tells the moving story of the unlikely encounter between French animal painter Rosa Bonheur and the American entertainer Colonel William Cody, aka Buffalo Bill. In 1889 Rosa Bonheur, France’s best-known animal painter, is living in seclusion in her chateau near Paris. One day, she reads that Buffalo Bill and his Wild West Show are coming to France. Rosa Bonheur sees a unique opportunity: she will be able to draw real American bison and wild mustangs. New inspiration! The American West always fascinated her. She might even get to meet and paint portraits of the Lakota Sioux who are also part of the Wild West Show. But will the fe…

Books for kids for the holidays or anytime

It's time to think about what to give for the end of the year holidays. We've collected a few ideas in the book department, because there's nothing we love more than books for kids. Come over to Bill & Rosa's Book Room 26 November at 16:00 and listen to author Camille Guénot read in French in a mysterious setting and get a signed copy of OSCAR GOUPIL, A LONDON MYSTERY. Free event, please sign up at brbookroom@gmail.com OSCAR GOUPIL, A LONDON MYSTERY Si vous aimez le confort douillet de votre quotidien, si vous exécrez le mystère et la magie, reposez ce livre et passez votre chemin. Car ce qui vous attend entre ces pages n’est pas pour les âmes sensibles. Je vous le dis tout net : je suis un garçon ordinaire à qui des choses extraordinaires vont arriver. Mes parents m'avaient laissé une lettre : je passerais mes vacances de fin d'année chez ma grand-tante Léonie, à Londres. Pas vraiment un cadeau, vu sa réputation. Et le train partait dans une heure. "Délici…

Remembering World War I with Willa Cather

In honor of the armistice of the end of World War I and Veterans in many countries, we present a fictional piece describing an American soldier's experience in France in 1917 when he and his comrades come across a cheese shop in Rouen. This extract is from the World War I novel One of Ours by Willa Cather, an American writer. The novel won the 1923 Pulitzer Prize. It tells the story of the life of Claude Wheeler, a Nebraska native who joins the US Army and is sent to France during World War I, just like the step Grandfather I never knew. Extract: At noon that day Claude found himself in a street of little shops, hot and perspiring, utterly confused and turned about. Truck drivers and boys on bell less bicycles shouted at him indignantly, furiously. He got under the shade of a young plane tree and stood close to the trunk, as if it might protect him. His greatest care, at any rate, was off his hands. With the help of Victor Morse he had hired a taxi for forty francs, taken…

Recycle, Please don’t just throw everything in the garbage

Zero waste

There's a Zero waste boutique in Paris, 3 rue Charles Nodier 75018, which proposes ateliers, information, products and ideas for moving your day to day towards zero waste. The association Zero waste France which runs the boutique has all kinds of different campaigns to reduce waste most of them are initiatives to not use containers or distribute flyers in the first place. The association is also a great place to volunteer or make monetary a contribution.

But sometimes we have waste, we have to get rid of things no longer useful to us. So here's some ideas as to how to clean up and clean out by sending things you are don't with to either proper disposal facilities or recycle and pass them on to others who just might find your garage to be just what they need.

Please don’t just throw everything in the garbage - recycle

Some items need a few minutes reflection for proper waster disposal and to recycle. For example according…

Rosa Bonheur Bicentennial Continuing Celebrations

As you probably know Bill & Rosa's Book room was named for the showman Buffalo Bill and the painter Rosa Bonheur (learn who Rosa was here). March 16th is Rosa's birthday and this year, 2022, is the Rosa Bonheur Bicentennial. To celebrate her 200th birthday here's a sampling of the events which include the naming of Rosa Bonheur's rose, the launch of a postage stamp, retrospective exhibitions at the Musée d'Orsay and the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux, exhibition at the Château de Fontainebleau, publications, conferences, documentaries, tributes... At Rosa Bonheur's Chateau Exhibition: The Museum of the missing artwork The Château de By, just outside Paris near Fontainebleau, Rosa's residence for nearly 40 years, is, in 2022, full of effervescence for this big anniversary. The kickoff happened last week when their new exhibition space was inaugurated. The first exhibit is called Le Musée des oeuvres disparues or the Museum of the missing artwork. Throughout her lif…

Why is it called? Part 4: Clothing Etymology

Why is it called...? Part 4: Clothing Etymology Have you ever asked yourself why something is called by a particular name? Why are bérets called that? How do clothes get named? There is often a story. Here is a short list of some clothing articles and how they got their names, etymology. We invite readers to add their own favorites or ask about other clothes for which they would like to know the origin in the comments. We'll try to find the answer. Charentaises A charentaise is a general French word for slipper. It refers however to a specific pantoufle usually plaid which came from the area near Angoulême in the Charente region of France about 300 years ago. Hence the Etymology comes from the place. The area had many paper mills. At the time paper was made from rags and leftover felt pieces from the paper making were used to line wooden shoes, making them warmer and softer. A bit later a shoemaker from the town of La Rochefoucaud in the Charente had the idea to add a r…

Paris Quotes (France, La Seine …)

Paris Quotes (France, La Seine too) To be Parisian is not to have been born in Paris, but to be reborn there. — Sacha Guitry ... here's what Paris is: it is a giant reference work, a city which you can consult like an encyclopaedia: whatever page you open gives you a complete list of information that is richer than that offered by any other city. Take the shops... in Paris there are cheese shops where hundreds of cheeses, all of them different, are displayed, each labelled with its own name, cheeses covered in ash, cheeses covered in walnuts: a kind of museum or Louvre of cheese... Above all this is a triumph of the spirit of classification and nomenclature. So if tomorrow I start writing about cheese, I can go out and consult Paris like an enormous cheese encyclopaedia. -- Italo Calvino in Hermit in Paris Two days and three endless nights later we arrived in Paris... Paris looked much bigger than Bordeaux, but much uglier. The bread tasted flat. Everything, even the sun…

Josephine Baker is back at the Bobino

The Gaîté metro station, on metro line 13, was rebaptized a year ago in the name of the French-American artist and resistant Josephine Baker. The choice of which station to name in her honor was obvious for her son Brian Bouillon-Baker, who was at the initiative of the request made to the Ministry of Transport and RATP. The station is located a few steps from the Bobino Theater, which is where the singer and dancer performed for the last time, on April 9, 1975, two days before her death. Place Joséphine Baker is just around the corner too. This Fall Brian Bouillon-Baker brings his mother back to the Bobino in a show which is part recreation of his mother's hits and part biography. It's a full circle! Tickets are now available for this fall's 6 dates. Reservations To whet your whistle enjoy this teaser: In case you've been stuck in a cave for the last year, Josephine Baker's cenotaph was installed in the Pantheon of illustrious French people in November 2021. …

Learn French! Bear! Espèces d’ours!

Bear! Espèces d'ours! After being charged by an adult male grizzly bear in Yellowstone National Park and shouting "Bear!" John and Lisa (read the Yellowstone press release here and listen to John tell the story here) were amused to return to Paris to find an exhibition entitled The World of Bears or Espèces d'ours! at the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle. So they trotted right over to see what the museum had to say about bears. It turns out there are 8 species of bears in the world. The grizzly bear John and Lisa encountered, called Ursus arctos horribilis in scientific nomenclature, is a subspecies of the brown bear. It is also less commonly known as the silvertip bear. Scientists generally do not use the name grizzly bear but call it the North American brown bear to distinguish it from the European or Asian brown bear. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark called it "grisley". They were notoriously bad spellers and perhaps meant grizzly in reference to lighter tips …

Festival America

Festival America, held every other year in Vincennes, to the east of Paris, will be taking place between 22 and 25 September. It brings together over sixty writers not only from the United States, but also from Canada, Quebec, Mexico, Cuba and Haiti, in a bid to acquaint the French public with North American literature and culture. The festival was first organized in 2002 and has since become one of the highlights of the French literary calendar — around 45,000 people are expected to attend this year. This year’s edition will bring together 63 guests, including Jonathan Franzen, Louise Erdrich, Richard Ford, Russell Banks, Joyce Maynard, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Emma Cline, Natasha Trethewey, Julie Otsuka, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Jake Lamar (who was at the Book Room to talk about his latest novel, Viper’s Dream, just last spring. You can read an interview with him here ) and many others, around the theme ‘Voix d’Amérique’ (Voices of America): voices of writers who speak about past trauma …

90+ Ways You Know You’re Becoming French

Books, Shopping, Travel, Tourism, Laughter the Best Medicine
28 novembre 2022

This little book that fits in your hand developed from the article « 20 Ways You Know You’re Becoming French » by long time Paris resident hailing […]

9.00 €

Learn French and English idiomatic expressions

Learning, Lessons, Education, Books
22 novembre 2022

The Speak Easy is a game for learning French idiomatic expressions. The puzzles were published in the FUSAC magazine for 25 years before being compiled […]

Les Parisettes Boutique

Shopping, Travel, Tourism
1 mars 2022

Les Parisettes is a concept store which specializes in souvenirs from Paris and the Eiffel Tower. Everything you’ll will find there carries on the theme […]

Lisa

Rosa Bonheur Book Event at the Book Room

Books for kids for the holidays or anytime

Remembering World War I with Willa Cather

Recycle, Please don’t just throw everything in the garbage

Rosa Bonheur Bicentennial Continuing Celebrations

Why is it called? Part 4: Clothing Etymology

Paris Quotes (France, La Seine …)

Josephine Baker is back at the Bobino

Learn French! Bear! Espèces d’ours!

Festival America

Annonces

90+ Ways You Know You’re Becoming French

Learn French and English idiomatic expressions

Les Parisettes Boutique

BILL & ROSA's BOOK ROOM