What is it about Oprah that she can even get a grumpy old scribbler to jump on a chair and scream like a teenager?
O, The Oprah Magazine, has just picked The Hundred-Foot Journey as one of its 9 beach books “to love and leave behind (but not in your heart)“.
A Viagem dos Cem Passos, the Portuguese version of The Hundred-Foot Journey, was published last month. Here are recent and positive reviews in TimeOut Lisboa and the literary blogger, Vidaadias.
Oprah WInfrey
Was delighted to discover that The Hundred-Foot Journey was No. 8 on Oprah’s 20 Books For Armchair Travelers to take on vacation. Yahooooo.
NewBooks is a British magazine and web site for compulsive readers and reading groups. Here’s a sweet and to the point review by Anne Cater of The Hundred-Foot Journey.
This reviewer in the United Kingdom has done a seriously thorough job analyzing The Hundred-Foot Journey and myself in a spooky-sounding blog called The Truth About Lies.
Down below is a short and sweet review of Le Voyage de Cent pas (The Hundred-Foot Journey) in Le Monde, the establishment rag of all France.
It must be said – the French critics have been extremely generous to this impertinent outsider. Also check out these video reviews of Le Voyage de Cent pas from the colorful French critic, Gérard Collard, found here and here.
Anthony Trollope
While I have in the past greatly savored the first two volumes of Anthony Trollope’s classic oeuvre, The Chronicles of Barsetshire, I have never read the entire six volume series. Trollope’s mid 19th century novels revolve around the Church of England clergy in mythic Barchester (sounding an awful lot like Winchester,) and I started reading them back-to-back when I spotted the entire series available on Kindle for a mere 89 cents. The story essentially revolves around Mr. Harding, a good natured but slightly weak episcopal minister, trying to find his way, alongside his extended family, amongst the catty, ambitious, and manipulative ecclesiastical hierarchy plying its “business” in the shadow of Barchester Cathedral. Mrs. Proudie, the Barchester Bishop’s domineering wife, has to be among the most finely drawn and psychologically acute characters ever to find life on page. Trollope’s take on the all-powerful Jupiter and its arrogant editors is a stunningly accurate damnation of today’s media.
To be so amused, enlightened, and touched by the political machinations and backstabbing of the Barchester clergy is priceless, but to do so for the price of a Taco Bell burrito makes this Kindle offer – in my humble opinion, as Mr. Slope might say – one of the greatest literary bargains around. Here’s Trollope’s droll wit at its best, a section I highlighted late last night while reading in bed.
If you still consider my opinion of Trollope to be suspect – and I am sure I have given you ample cause to do so – then I trust you will hold in esteem the opinions of my betters. “His great, his inestimable merit,” said Henry James, “was a complete appreciation of the usual.” Or this, from Nathaniel Hawthorne, in a letter dated 1860: “Have you ever read the novels of Anthony Trollope? They precisely suit my taste; solid, substantial, written on strength of beef and through inspiration of ale, and just as real as if some giant had hewn a great lump out of the earth and put it under a glass case, with all its inhabitants going about their daily business, and not suspecting that they were made a show of.”
I rest my quill.
Radio France
From my editor at Calmann-Lévy in France – “Brigitte Kernel aime Le Voyage de Cent pas !”
Translation: Brigitte Kernel, a personality on the influential Radio France, loves The Hundred-foot Journey. Check out the Radio France site.
Review in Livres Hebdo, January 28th, 2011
When my wife and I were young, we lived for a blissful year in a picture-perfect atelier in the 5th arrondissement in Paris. As we went about our business, we were always struck by how courteous and generous the shopkeepers were to us, perhaps because, as badly as we mangled their beautiful language, they could see how hard we were trying.
One again I encounter the generosity of the French – in this pre-pub review of Le Voyage de Cent pas in Livres Hebdo, the French equivalent of PublishersWeekly.
My former Forbes colleague, Kiri Blakely, just made me aware of the Kindle highlight. (Kiri has a lively book out called, Can’t Think Straight.) The nifty Kindle feature allows readers to highlight their favorite phases. Here’s the shortlist of favorites from The Hundred-Foot Journey.
“never forget a snob is a person utterly lacking in good taste.”
Highlighted by 20 Kindle users
“You have made me understand that good taste is not the birthright of snobs, but a gift from God sometimes found in the most unlikely of places and in the unlikeliest of people.”
Highlighted by 15 Kindle users
“My dear man, a gourmand is a gentleman with the talent and fortitude to continue eating even when he is not hungry.”
Highlighted by 14 Kindle users
“there are many points in life when we cannot see what awaits us around the corner, and it is precisely at such times, when our path forward is unclear, that we must bravely keep our nerve, resolutely putting one foot before the other as we march blindly into the dark.”
Highlighted by 10 Kindle users
“taxation was the art of ‘plucking the most feathers with the least amount of hissing.’”
Highlighted by 10 Kindle users
“A powerful thing, destiny. You can’t run from it. Not in the end.”
Highlighted by 8 Kindle users
“Never be afraid of trying something new, Hassan. Very important. It is the spice of life.”
Highlighted by 8 Kindle users
“It was such a small journey, in feet, but it felt as if I were striding from one end of the universe to the other, the light of the Alps illuminating my way.”
Highlighted by 7 Kindle users
“A lot of emotion went into that hundred-foot journey, cardboard suitcase in hand, from one side of Lumière’s boulevard to the other.”
Highlighted by 7 Kindle users
“bhelpuri, a newspaper cone of puffed rice, chutney, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, mint, and coriander, all mixed together and slathered with spices.”
Highlighted by 6 Kindle users
