"Happy Birthday, mon cher..."

All grown up with lots of places to go...

Every year, just about this time, at my house we start hedging into birthday territory. If it's your birthday and you have a low tolerance for celebrating it, you'd better keep it a secret from me because I'm an equal-opportunity celebrator of birthdays, one and all.

The class of 1940...

My Frencher Half, on the other hand, born on 10 November in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, arrived shortly before the Paris labor strikes of 1936, in which his working-class, slate-roofing-installer father participated fully--which was going to mean frequent periods of interrupted employment and an economically-austere beginning for the nouveau-né.

Not to mention being right on time for the German Army's invasion of France and the occupation of Paris from 14 June 1940 to 25 August 1944, which was going to mean that his father would be way out in the woods for an extended period of his life, before his family was safely reunited with a roof over its head and no one trying to ship his father off to a work camp in Germany. All of which was going to put a serious crimp in whatever sort of celebrating might have been done under other, less dire, circumstances leaving my Frencher Half and his family with a tradition of being on the Birthday Party Austerity Plan forever after.

The serious little girl with the long dark curls
still has a protective hand on his shoulder...

What are you doing the rest of your life?
North and South and East and West of your life?
I have only one request of your life
That you spend it all with me

a cold bottle of Vouvray Brut and
a finger or two of crème de Cassis
can make you forget pricey champagne
faster than you can scrawl "Dear John,..."

"A book is a present you can open again and again..."

With a birthday in the offing, and at the risk encountering a look of total incomprehension or, worse, a cranky mini-rant along the lines of how many physical books we already own that remain, indeed, yet unread on our many wooden bookshelves, I chose to follow my impulse to gift my soon-to-be 75 year-old husband with a copy of Graham Robb's, newly translated from British English to French, history of France, "The Discovery of France: A Geographical History from the Revolution to WWI," AKA "Une histoire buissionnière de la France." However, never one to stop while she's ahead at the obvious, and always interested in getting the most expansive experience for my gift-giving buck, I decided to couch the book itself in context of the first commercially available AmazonKindle in France.

Consequently, one week ago today, the very day that I received this week's Télérama with the first full-page Amazon.fr Kindle ad on the inside-cover, I logged onto Amazon.fr and ordered the ebook, a cover/case with car-charger (creative bundling), and a 2-year breakage/theft insurance plan. And then, once the ordering transaction was complete and the Kindle paid for, I had a severe attack of buyer's remorse, frequently experienced chez moi as a surge of adrenaline, burning stabby pains in my body, and a voiceover shrieking assertions such as "That's the stupidest gift you ever constructed! It's all wrong! He's going to make a pained fake smile upon receiving it and not really like it at all." accompanied, naturally, by images of my sweet husband trying to read for relaxation, dozing off as he is wont to do when reading, and the new Kindle slipping from his grasp onto the floor, as often do his livres de poche, followed by a crunchy breaky sound. That was fun...

I want to see your face in every kind of light
In fields of dawn and forests of the night
And when you stand before the candles on a cake
Let me be the one to hear the silent wish you make

The day the doorbell rang signaling the arrival of the egift by courier, I was alone in the house and able to reach the front door downstairs before the deliveryman had made a complete getaway. Actually, I didn't see him when I opened the door, he saw me, although he was in the process of walking down the street, away from the house--it takes time to get to the front door from my perch up here in front of my laptop--and he came back with a smile and handed over the most recent worst mistake I was convinced I had ever made.

I had already told my husband earlier in the week that if the door rang he wasn't to answer it, I would answer it. But, as luck would have it, he was not even near the house. He was out and about at the Saturday public market which meant that I had plenty of time to open the shipping packaging, check out the merchandise, plug in the Frencher Kindle, start its battery charging, and pre-fill the little sucker with enticing reads, above and beyond the keystone work by Graham Robb. Upon investigation I found out that the Frencher Kindle came with free dictionaries in 5 languages already uploaded--French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and German.

I also discovered that it was smaller than the U.S. basic Kindle that I have been walking around with for almost 2 years. It is actually the size of a normal paperback pocketbook. What a surprise! What wasn't a surprise, compared to the offerings on Amazon.com, was the current dearth of books available in French for the FK. I already knew how little there was, but I don't for one minute believe that the situation will remain that way. It was actually the presence of Graham Robb's book in French via Kindle, simultaneously with its French publication in paperback, that convinced me to go ahead with my idea for the gift and gives me hope that the flood gates will open and waves of wonderful and varied material will become available soon. For the moment I am limiting myself to writing about a birthday gift for my Frencher Half, later I hope to write more about the seismic shifting that the whole matter of ereaders is causing in France, on general principle...

any excuse for a party will do...

By Sunday morning "The Gift" was ready for giving, never mind that the FH's birthday wasn't until the following Thursday--tomorrow. So, I asked him if he had anything against celebrating his birthday a little bit early since, in fact, we already had a movie, "Habemus Papam," planned for later the same day. (I almost always went to the movies to celebrate my birthdays.) All we needed was some semblance of a birthday cake, two champagne flutes, some kir royalesque libation, some music on the boombox, and an assortment of pastries from Mme Blasquez's patisserie across the way. She's open on Sundays, so I just put my London Foggy raincoat on over my sleeping T-shirt and beat a path to her shop before everything on display was sold off. Next time you need an early birthday party forced on you give me a holler...

I've been bangin' my glass up against his for more than
a quarter of a century and it hasn't broken yet...

Fortune smiled on me at the insta-party and my Frencher Half's eyes sparkled as he spied the contents of the little carrier that I had invented for his Frencher Kindle--until the real thing comes along. He didn't offer me a resigned expression of thanks for something that he really didn't want. Instead, he caressed his little ebook in wonder and watched with a certain respect and attention as I gave him a quick tour of its potential. And he was very pleased to find Graham Robb's history of France preloaded and ready for him to start reading at his earliest whim. Generous soul that he is, he was particularly happy when I told him that I had downloaded a Norwegian book, in English, entitled "Sophie's World" by Jostein Gaarder that I had wanted to read for 15 years and couldn't download to my own Kindle because it is a European publication and not available to the U.S. market. Now, I'll just have to catch his FK when he turns back to a traditional delivery system for expanding his mind!

a few minutes of quiet contemplation
before the birthday movie...

"What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?"
music by Michel LeGrand
words by Alan & Marilyn Bergman

old books, new books,
my books, your books,
paper books, ebooks...