Archives des Book Room - FUSAC Paris Classifieds

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…

Book Room Events

Upcoming Book Room Events: Saturday 23 November 16:00 Cheese tasting with die-hard cheese lover and an Academy of Cheese Level 1 Associate Emily Monaco. 4€ "PAF" (participation fee), please sign up at brbookroom@gmail.com. Saturday 7 December 16:00 Author Thomas C. Williams will be discussing his historical fiction novels English Turn: Napoleon Invades Louisiana: Volume I: Ruins of Empires and Kash Kachu (White House): Volume 1: Revenge of the Katchina. Free, please sign up at brbookroom@gmail.com Saturday 14 December 16:00 Christmas story time, for children ages 4 to 8. Free, please sign up at brbookroom@gmail.com Old book craft workshops: Paper flowers, Journals, Pop-up cards, Mobile making, Christmas crackers. Textile workshops, Children’s story time Read more about the Book Room https://www.fusac.fr/bill-rosas-book-room/

Vintage & Classic Murder Mystery

If you’re looking for some gripping reads to take with you on holiday, we’ve got you covered! We picked four vintage classic murder mystery authors who will keep you hooked. A lot of their books are available at Bill& Rosa’s Book Room, starting at 3€! Read on and pick your favorite flavor of mystery. Agatha Christie (born in England in 1890, died in 1976). Homeschooled from an early age and the youngest of three (much older) siblings, she was used to making up stories to entertain herself and started writing around the age of 18. After marrying Archie Christie in 1914, she served for a while as a nurse in the Voluntary Aid Detachment, where it is said that she learned about poisons and medicinal plants. She would later use this knowledge in The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1919), in which her exceptional description of the murderer’s use of poison garnered her a review in the Pharmaceutical Journal. Her most famous character, Hercule Poirot, is believed to have been …

James Baldwin centennial

James Baldwin was born on August 2 1924 in Harlem, New York, to a young single mother who later married a minister. He found refuge in reading books at the public library and started writing at a young age. Despite a fraught relationship with his stepfather, Baldwin followed in his footsteps and was a preacher for three years (a period that he describes as formative in Go Tell It on the Mountain) and took odd jobs to support himself, his siblings and mother. He eventually moved to Greenwich Village where he worked as a freelance writer and met Richard Wright, who helped him get a grant that would support him. He started getting essays published in national periodicals around this time. Baldwin was unhappy in New York, where he felt like his identity as a black gay man would not be accepted. In 1948, at age 24, he moved to Paris on another grant and found that France provided reprieve from the discrimination that he had felt in the United States, making it possible for hi…

La Dictée and the Spelling Bee, Two traditions

Two spelling traditions: the Spelling Bee versus La Dictée It is quite ironic that the most often misspelled word in English is: "misspell"! Spelling is important in English and part of learning it. English speakers remember spelling bees from grade school. Classroom competitions right up to nationals! The first national United States Spelling Bee* was in 1925. Soemtimes it is part of the country fair along with 4H. The word "bee" is usually used to describe a get-together for communal work, like a quilting bee or a husking bee during harvest time. The word probably comes from been or bean (meaning "help offered by neighbors"), from Middle English bene (meaning "prayer", "boon" and additional service to one's lord). A spelling bee or test is based on single words being spelt properly! https://youtu.be/thfb9PK_tQQ?si=oxhllqW9gl76kHdm In France a similar exercise is in fact a much harder one called La Dictée . It has caused plenty of trauma amongst les écoliers as it is…

Rio Soléy Design

Rio Soléy is the designer behind the hand drawn Paris map that helps people see that Bill & Rosa's Book Room is not far at all from Paris center. We love her work which is both elegant and whimsical at the same time. Her journey in lettering started at the age of 5 when her parents enrolled her in a calligraphy class. Since then, she's been captivated by the intricacies of letterforms and the artistry involved in evoking diverse emotions through them. She tells us a bit more about herself and her art, including her beautifully thought out and crafted IRO print collection. Can you tell us a bit about yourself? Hello! I’m Rio Soléy, a digital artist & designer specialised in lettering. I create and sell art prints that evoke optimism, simplicity, and tranquility. I’m from Japan, but I’ve lived in Canada, the UK, Germany, and now in France. When I’m not creating art prints, I’m painting letters on store signs and vitrines to help shop owners in Paris stand out …

Interview with Fiona Sze-Lorrain

Fiona Sze-Lorrain is a poet, literary translator and musician. She writes and translates in English, French, and Chinese and is the author of several poetry collections and most recently a novel in stories, Dear Chrysathemums, published by Scribner in 2023. Longlisted for the 2024 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, the novel celebrates diversity and women and features deeply compelling Asian women who reckon with the past, violence, and exile—set in Shanghai, Beijing, Singapore, Paris, and New York. Fiona lives in Paris and we were thrilled to welcome her in February to the Book Room, where she talked about her novel. If you missed her event, you can read the questions we asked and Fiona’s answers below: Bill & Rosa: You are a musician and a poet, you have published several collections of poems, I was wondering what was the determining factor in your decision to write a novel? Was it a character, or a story that you felt needed to be told? Fiona Sze-…

Are You Becoming French?

Are You Becoming French?The French say that foreigners can never truly “become” French - no matter what legal status is inscribed upon what identity papers they carry around in their France-based wallets (1). Nor might newly minted citizens or official residents wish to swap their own cultural markers, manners and mentalities for those of the local waiter who serves them their morning café au lait et croissant (to say nothing of totally being able to). But if you’re here long enough, your adaptation mirrors those Escher drawings where columns of black geese or fish on the left fly or swim straight across the page, migrating and mutating by imperceptible degrees, melting into and finally becoming their white counterparts on the right. To a greater or lesser degree, whether you expected to or not, one day you realize that you’re crossing to the other side. How do you know that you’ve arrived? When you (a very incomplete list): 1. sound as brilliantly amusing-funny-sarcastic-sn…

Coups de cœur at Bill & Rosa’s Book Room

Coups de cœur at Bill & Rosa's Book Room is an article that features a favorite selection our recent donations that are available for purchase. COLD COMFORT FARM by Stella Gibbons Flora Post is orphaned at twenty and decides her only option is to descend on relatives - the doomed Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm, where she takes each of the family in hand and brings order to their chaos. What we think: This comical portrait of British rural life in the 1930s will have you roaring with laughter. Available at the Book Room, 5€ The Noise of Time, Julian Barnes In May 1937 a man in his early thirties waits by the lift of a Leningrad apartment block. He waits all through the night, expecting to be taken away to the Big House. Any celebrity he has known in the previous decade is no use to him now. And few who are taken to the Big House ever return. What we think: This is a remarkable fictional biography of the great Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovi…

Bill & Rosa’s Book Room

Where is Bill & Rosa's Book Room?

At the newly renovated Porte de Saint Cloud! Not far at all from the centers of Paris or Boulogne-Billancourt.

Exact address: 42 rue du Chemin Vert 92100 Boulogne-Billancourt. See the map

Metro line 9 to Porte de St Cloud; Busses: 22, 42, 62, 72, PC

When is Bill & Rosa's Book Room open? Click for hours What is Bill & Rosa's Book Room ?

First of all, for us, a Book Room is a comfortable place to spend some time. Think of it as the reading lounge on the ocean liners of yore with a western bent. Our maître-mots are

Read, Write, Relax. Buy, Borrow, Donate.

Bill & Rosa's Book Room has several aspects. It is first a USED BOOK SHOP and a LENDING LIBRARY. There are many novels of all genres for sale plus non-fiction, b…

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