The French Book Club Tour

Literary sites we visit

• Victor Hugo’s house in Paris
• The Normandy beaches
• Castles of the Loire Valley
• Provence, the land of Julia Child
• Famous Paris bookshops
• The Panthéon

From past tours

Reading list

Download the reading list (PDF)

• AugustMrs. Harris Goes to Paris · Paul Gallico

  A London cleaning woman falls desperately in love with a Dior gown and refuses to let anything stand in the way of owning one. This charming novel captures the magic of Paris through an outsider's enchanted eyes—exactly how many of us feel when we dream of France. We'll visit the Gallerie Dior and stroll Saint-Germain-des-Prés, where fashion and literature have always intertwined,and you'll understand why Paris has the power to make anyone believe in impossible dreams.

• SeptemberMadame Bovary · Gustave Flaubert

  A doctor's wife suffocates in small-town Norman life and seeks escape through romance and fantasy. We'll spend two days in Flaubert's Normandy—his museum at Croisset, Rouen Cathedral where he was baptized, and the countryside where Emma's dreams unfolded. Read this first, and Normandy becomes far more than pretty landscapes.

• OctoberA Movable Feast · Ernest Hemingway

  Hemingway's luminous memoir of 1920s Paris—the cafés, the poverty and passion that shaped him. We'll dine at Café de Flore, browse Shakespeare and Company, and walk Luxembourg Gardens where Hemingway once caught pigeons for dinner. This slim book teaches you to see Paris the way writers do.

• NovemberThe Count of Monte Cristo · Alexander Dumas

  Betrayed and imprisoned, Edmond Dantès escapes to become the wealthy Count, methodically destroying everyone who wronged him. This page-turner carries you through the holidays. On our final day, we'll see Marseille's harbor and Château d'If where Dantès was imprisoned, and his tale will echo across the Mediterranean exactly as Dumas imagined.

• DecemberMy Life in France · Julia Child

  A tall American woman arrives in Paris, tastes sole meunière, and has her life changed forever. Julia's story teaches us that France is a state of mind—a commitment to pleasure. We'll take a cooking class in Provence, dine in Parisian brasseries, and have lunch where Julia had her first French meal, all channeling Julia's infectious joy.

• January & FebruaryLes Miserables · Victor Hugo

  Hugo's epic of love, justice, and revolution spans decades of French history. We'll visit his house at Place des Vosges where he wrote, his tomb in the Panthéon, and walk the Paris streets where Jean Valjean fled. Give yourself two months for this masterpiece; when you see Hugo's study, every page will mean more. Feel free to read the abridged version, if the original (1,400 pager) is too daunting.

• MarchA Year in Provence · Peter Mayle

  This is the book that made everyone want to move to southern France. Mayle's account of markets, eccentric neighbors, and rosé-soaked lunches prepares you for our Provençal days. We'll experience village markets in Aix-en-Provence and dine outdoors under plane trees. Arriving having read this makes it feel like stepping into a beloved story.

• AprilThe Hunchback of Notre Dame · Victor Hugo

  Quasimodo, Esmeralda, and the bells of Notre-Dame in Hugo's Gothic masterpiece. We'll visit the cathedral's exterior—scarred by fire but still magnificent—that Hugo saved from demolition with this novel. His passionate descriptions sparked the preservation movement that shaped the Paris we see today.

• MayBand of Brothers · Stephen E. Ambrose

  Easy Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne—the men who parachuted into Normandy on D-Day. Essential reading before our Normandy day, when we'll stand on the beaches where they landed and walk the ground they crossed under fire. This book makes you feel the weight of their sacrifice.

• JuneThe Three Musketeers · Alexandre Dumas

  D'Artagnan arrives in Paris dreaming of becoming a musketeer and gets caught up in duels and intrigue. This swashbuckling adventure races through the Paris we'll walk and the France we'll explore. We'll visit Dumas's tomb in the Panthéon and his home outside Paris, understanding why France honors its storytellers as much as its kings.

Your trip leaders

Vanessa

Founder · lifelong Anglophile

As a girl Vanessa lived in Scotland with her grandmother, who was working on a PhD in British Literature. Touring English manors, gardens and abbeys together turned her into a tea-drinking, scone-eating Anglophile for life. She also runs Wanderlust Crew, and has four children she loves to read with and drag around the world.

Tamara

Former bookseller, park ranger & teacher

Tamara found childhood kindred spirits in Matilda, Anne Shirley and Ramona, worked as a bookseller through college, studied literature in the UK, and has started five book clubs at last count. She has been a National Park ranger in Alaska and an elementary school teacher, and now homeschools her two children in Tennessee.

Questions