Tag: France
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France đŤđˇ or Scotland đ´ó §ó ˘ó łó Łó ´ó ż, which would it be?
If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be? My maternal grandparents were Scottish immigrants, born and raised in Glasgow, who came to America for better jobs and religious freedom. My grandfather fought (and was gassed) in WWI, and never fully recovered his health after that experience. They were born Catholics living…
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Book Review: The White Octopus Hotel by Alexandra Bell
NetGalley is a digital platform that provides book people with FREE advance reading copies (ARCs) of books yet to be released in exchange for a review written and posted on their site, on Goodreads, on Amazon, on your own social media. Sometimes you are offered a book, but more often you request a book that…
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Feast Day of St. Bernadette of Lourdes
Wednesday, April 16, 2025 Day 4 of Holy Week Reflections On the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, February 11, 2025, I shared with my parish family at the Shrine of St. Jude a reflection I wrote after visiting Lourdes in July of 2024. Today is the feast day of St. Bernadette, who was the…
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Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes
Today, on this Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, I shared with my parish, the Shrine of St. Jude Catholic Church in Rockville, MD, my reflection on visiting Lourdes for the first time last summer. It has been posted on my parishâs website and their Facebook page. It is still one of the most moving…
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Book Review: The Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris by Evie Woods (a/k/a Evie Gaughan)
The Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris is my second book by Evie Woods, although I am a bit confused whether #2 is the chicken or the egg. I loved her first (?) book, The Lost Bookshop. It was the perfect blend of a dual timeline, half contemporary and half historical, with a dash of…
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Book ReviewâThe Paris Girl: The Young Woman Who Outwitted the Nazis and Became a WWII Hero by Francelle Bradford White
When I look back through the list of nonfiction books Iâve read over the last few years, I am drawn to those titles where the author disseminates information about a topic in a narrative style not unlike a piece of historical fiction. At the top of that list (for me) would be: and others. These…
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Book Review: An Art Loverâs Guide to Paris and Murder by Dianne Freeman
The âgood news:â This gorgeous cover (you had me at âartâ and âParisâ) made me snatch this book right off the shelf at my local library (shout out to Aspen Hill Library, a branch of Montgomery County Public Libraries, Montgomery County, Maryland). It had been a long week and I was needing to read my…
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Book Review: The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods
Although I just returned from a week in Ireland, and two weeks in France, we were nowhere near Paris, due to the Olympics taking over the city. While the southwest of France where we exclusively traveled on this trip was beautiful, I do wish I could get to Paris for two things: more French food…
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Book Review: Death and Croissants by Ian Moore
Cozy mysteries are my favorite genre, and I especially like those set in foreign locales, but for some reason this one sort of dragged for me. Although set in the Loire Valley of France, it didn’t feel very French to me, perhaps given the protagonist and MMC is British, but he is supposedly fluent in…
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Book Review: The Paris Novel by Ruth Reichl
While considerable thought goes into packing clothing for an overseas vacation, especially when visiting multiple countries with differing climates, I give equally as much thought into what I will read on the trip. My Kindle is always fully loaded and downloaded and ready to go. For my recent trip to Ireland and France, I had…
Michelle Blanchard Ardillo 