katmc

Mid-year resolution: start reading

I need to read more often.

I lived in France for a few months last year and during my very brief studies at the Alliance Francaise I befriended a retired lawyer from the United States. He retired to France following a career that included stints as a corporate lawyer in New York and Bermuda and a lawyer representing wild bears in San Francisco.

One day after I’d stopped studying at the school, I ran into my friend on the street and we decided to go drink hot chocolate in the Hôtel Lutetia. The Hôtel Lutetia is not someplace I would have discovered on my own - inside it seems very American, in a good, cinematic, old New York way. It was used to house German soldiers during the Second World War and then used to house refugees from concentration camps when it was reclaimed after the war. My friend told me this history and other random things. There is almost nothing I love more than trivia. While discussing my hometown he momentarily thought Thunder Bay was the setting for the book. It’s not, but his description of the story and enthusiasm for the book led me to promise to read it. It’s been a whole year and I haven’t! That is really pathetic.