My favorite memoirs are joyful, personal, and uplifting, especially those that tell of travel, intercultural understanding, food, cooking, creating art, and personal growth, all subjects for which I am passionate. Years ago, I taught adults cooking, specializing in the food from places I had traveled (India, China, Iran, Denmark, Spain, Afghanistan). Now, at 82, though I live alone, I still cook every day and collect recipes to try. When I was writing my own travel memoir, I constantly read other memoirs, always searching for the best of the best. I found I especially loved books that included recipes, maps, or illustrations. These recommendations are only a few of my favorites.
Who could resist this first line? “I slept with my French husband halfway through our first date.” Not me! Elizabeth Bard, in Paris for the weekend, sits down to lunch with a handsome Frenchman and falls in love.
Bard reveals how, despite her dreams of success, she was able to reinvent herself after marrying a Frenchman and moving to France. The included recipes run the gamut from what he cooked for her after they first made love to French dinner party food and traditional favorites from her American-Jewish family.
This memoir of finding a new life in the City of Lights is well-written, humorous, and personal. If you, like me, have ever fantasized that Paris could change your life, this book is a must-read.
In Paris for a weekend visit, Elizabeth Bard sat down to lunch with a handsome Frenchman -- and never went home again.
Was it love at first sight? Or was it the way her knife slid effortlessly through her pavé au poivre, the steak's pink juices puddling into the buttery pepper sauce? Lunch in Paris is a memoir about a young American woman caught up in two passionate love affairs -- one with her new beau, Gwendal, the other with French cuisine. Packing her bags for a new life in the world's most romantic city, Elizabeth is plunged into a…
Disclosure: This memoir is by a high school classmate. Georgeanne Brennan is an award-winning cookbook author (James Beard award), writer, and teacher who specializes in food with a Mediterranean slant. Her delightful memoir tells the fascinating true story of her move to Provence, France, in the 1970s with her husband and a toddler.
Brennan writes about changing one’s life, raising goats, learning to make cheese, hunting for truffles, and eating luscious meals with neighbors. She makes me want to move to the French countryside. If only I could speak French!
I loved the descriptions of food and the traditional ways of preparing and eating it in a French village. Each chapter ends with one of Georgeanne’s delicious recipes for a Provencal dish. What a bonus!
Each chapter is centered around a traditional Provencal food or meal, and the narrative is sprinkled in equal parts with local color, delicious recipes, and historical and cultural perspective on a region that has captivated travellers (and gourmands) for centuries.
The subtitle, Lessons in Food and Love from a Year in Paris, drew me to this memoir of a woman stranded in the city of her dreams without her husband. She fills her lonely days learning about French food. I enjoyed the memoir’s structure. Each chapter studies an iconic local dish: the history of the dish, the way it is made, her travels to find it, and tasting...lots of tasting. Her recipes, adjusted for American kitchens, are the bonus de resistance.
But Mah doesn’t write only about food. She also shares her struggles with loneliness, missing her husband, and finding her way around France on her own. I totally recommend this personal and informative memoir by a Chinese American Francophile.
The memoir of a young diplomat's wife who must reinvent her dream of living in Paris—one dish at a time
When journalist Ann Mah's diplomat husband is given a three-year assignment in Paris, Ann is overjoyed. A lifelong foodie and Francophile, she immediately begins plotting gastronomic adventures à deux. Then her husband is called away to Iraq on a year-long post—alone. Suddenly, Ann's vision of a romantic sojourn in the City of Light is turned upside down.
So, not unlike another diplomatic wife, Julia Child, Ann must find a life for herself in a new city. Journeying through Paris and…
While my previous three recommended memoirs feature French cooking, this one is about the Caribbean. In the early 1990s, the author and her husband rented their home and moved onto a 42-foot sailboat for a two-year sailing escapade.
I loved this memoir for its descriptions of high adventure and the dangers of a sailing life. Vanderhoof’s wonderful selection of recipes stem from her experiences cooking in a tiny, sea-going kitchen. Starting with Chesapeake Bay crabcakes, Ann progresses to curried lobster, stewed conch, and Piῆa Colada cheesecake.
Storms, friends, danger, repairs, the search for local food, and cooking combine to create a page-turning and delicious story—for me, a memoir similar to my own life-changing experience and resulting memoir.
Under the Tuscan Sun meets the wide-open sea . . . An Embarrassment of Mangoes is a delicious chronicle of leaving the type-A lifestyle behind—and discovering the seductive secrets of life in the Caribbean.
Who hasn't fantasized about chucking the job, saying goodbye to the rat race, and escaping to some exotic destination in search of sun, sand, and a different way of life? Canadians Ann Vanderhoof and her husband, Steve did just that.
In the mid 1990s, they were driven, forty-something professionals who were desperate for a break from their deadline-dominated, career-defined lives. So they quit their jobs, rented…
As an artist, I simply fell in love with this book about the author’s journey from a stressed advertising executive to a strolling artist. And yes, it is another memoir about falling in love in Paris. This one offers a different bonus: black and white illustrations that only hint at the vibrant, colorful watercolors featured in MacLeod’s next two books
Written with humor and intimacy, it offers a look at simplifying a fast-track life to allow for a year of travel. Besides being an uplifting read, this memoir features practical advice to make the dream of living abroad a reality–plus an additional bonus at the end–a list of tips on how to save/make $100 a day to set aside for a “break year.”
A New York Times bestseller For readers of Eat Pray Love, Under the Tuscan Sun, and The 4-Hour Workweek, comes a funny, romantic, and inspiring travel memoir about a woman who quits her job, moves to Paris, and finds love-and herself. With romantic Paris as the backdrop and beautifully illustrated with the author's own sketches, Paris Letters is for those who dream of a life richer and more fulfilling than the one they are living today. Exhausted and on the verge of burnout, Janice MacLeod cuts back, saves up, and buys herself two years of freedom in Europe. In Paris,…
Newlyweds (an artist and an engineer) meet the rigors of international travel and the ups and downs of married life in a Volkswagen microbus that continually needs repair. A memoir about a two-year, 40,000-mile journey, this book describes travel in a world before the internet or cell phones. Tom and Katie’s new marriage develops against the unusual background of exotic locations and van travel.
Descriptions of travel experiences are interspersed with sections about van life chores, marketing and cooking on the road, mechanical problems, people encountered along the way, and intimate moments of love and discord. Illustrated with photos, pen and ink drawings, quick sketches, and hand-drawn route maps.
