Selected Journals of L. M. Montgomery : Vol. I, 1889-1910

Par Lucy Maud Montgomery, édité par Mary Rubio et Elizabeth Waterston, Oxford University Press, Selected Journals 1

«Beginning when Lucy Maud Montgomery is fourteen, this first volume takes her to 1910, the year before her marriage, when she left Prince Edward Island. It recounts her schooldays in Cavendish, redolent with incidents, impressions, and romantic "crushes" that found their way into her fiction; a year spent in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan with her father and stepmother; a year of study at Prince of Wales College in Charlottetown, where she trained to be a teacher, and another at Dalhousie University; her teaching years; a powerful infatuation with the son of a family she lived with; a long and mostly unhappy period of keeping house for her grandmother; and the publication of Anne of Green Gables.»

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My Life in France

Par Julia Child et Alex Prud'homme, Knopf

«Julia Child singlehandedly created a new approach to American cuisine with her cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking and her television show The French Chef, but as she reveals in this bestselling memoir, she was not always a master chef. Indeed, when she first arrived in France in 1948 with her husband, Paul, who was to work for the USIS, she spoke no French and knew nothing about the country itself. But as she dove into French culture, buying food at local markets and taking classes at the Cordon Bleu, her life changed forever with her newfound passion for cooking and teaching. Julia's unforgettable story - struggles with the head of the Cordon Bleu, rejections from publishers to whom she sent her now-famous cookbook, a wonderful, nearly fifty-year long marriage that took them across the globe - unfolds with the spirit so key to her success as a chef and a writer, brilliantly capturing one of the most endearing American personalities of the last fifty years.»

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As Always, Julia : The Letters of Julia Child and Avis Devoto

Par Julia Child et Avis Devoto, édité par Joan Reardon, Houghton Mifflin

«Julia is known around the world by her first name alone. But how much do we really know of the inner Julia Child? Through this riveting correspondence between Julia and Avis DeVoto, her "pen pal" and literary mentor, we hear Julia's deepest thoughts and feelings and witness the blossoming of a unique and lifelong friendship. We see, too, the turbulent creation of one of the most influential cookbooks ever written. Frank, bawdy, funny, exuberant, these astonishing letters show an America on the verge of political, social, and gastronomic transformation and two women deeply engaged in the making of that new world.»

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Un peu plus loin sur la droite

Par Fred Vargas, J'ai Lu

«En planque sous les fenêtres de l'appartement du neveu d'un député, place de la Contrescarpe, Kehlweiler avise soudain une drôle de chose sur la grille d'un arbre. Un petit déchet blanchâtre au milieu d'excréments canins. Pas de doute, c'est un os. Et même un os humain... Naturellement, lorsque Kehlweiler apporte sa trouvaille au commissariat du 5e arrondissement, les flics lui rient au nez. Mais ce petit bout d'os l'obsède tellement qu'il abandonne ses filatures parisiennes et suit une piste jusqu'à Port-Nicolas, un village perdu au bout de la Bretagne. Là vit un pit-bull. Une sale bête, qui avalerait n'importe quoi. Y compris un bout de cadavre. Reste à trouver le cadavre. Et l'assassin...»

Un délice de poésie policière, encore une fois. Fred Vargas tricote finement, de son verbe délicat et juste, une intrigue tortueuse à souhait au coeur des zones grises de l'âme humaine. En suivant Kehlweiler, enquêteur (officieux, cette fois) au flair implacable, on retrouve avec bonheur les rues de Paris, Marthe-qui-n'oublie-jamais-rien, et ces inénarrables «Évangélistes», quatuor improbable et touchant, découvrant au passage un pan de Bretagne. Un petit bijou littéraire, bouleversant et inquiétant, à savourer tout doucement...

Lili lui donne: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★