Paris Passions: Watching the French Being Brilliant and Bizarre
"Spicer, a kind of cultural James Bond, slides in and out of the bistros and salons of French society as easily as 007 quaffs a martini ... a delightful book."  -- Jim Bittermann, CNN's Senior European CorrespondentCanadian and ex-pat journalist provides a whimsical guide to his many passions in Paris.  Both thoroughly accessible and exhaustively thorough, the book places Spicer's journey through Paris  and its surrounding suburbs within a global and historical context. With a reporter's wry eye for viewing  life sans rose-colored glasses, he seamlessly segues between newspaper column-like sections on  gastronomy, parks, architecture, seasonal festivals, historical figures, socialism, taxes, health care, sports,  fashion, art, music, film, flirting, ghetto riots, the European Union, "Omnipresident" Sarkozy's love life and  various other little-known people and places equally fascinating for being drawn in such exquisite detail.  Though photos are included, they pale in comparison to Spicer's enthusiastic, visceral descriptions.  However, several typos and printing errors prove distracting, and the last chapters concerning politics and  the EU are so jam-packed that they could be the beginnings of another book. But these are minor quibbles,  for the work is well-infused with a mind-grabbing celebration of its subject. Even the poetic flourishes fall into humor before cliché. At the Marais, "Parallel ghettos of the mind get along just fine here," while Le Salon "is the setting for France's enduring self-image as a nation of peasants, indeed a people that thinks it invented eating." Even as the author lightly ribs on French narcissism, coming down a bit harder on the country's knee-jerk reactionary leftist politics, his enduring romance with France shines through when discussing such things as the "hazards" of Paris, which include cholesterol and sunburn, and the fact that you may fall in love with "somebody, or anybody, or everybody." Though Spicer discovered the City of Lights over half a century ago, he doesn't fail to recapture why he fell in love in the first place. Contagious exuberance will make you want to give this beloved city a first glance or a second, or even third, chance.  --Kirkus Discoveries“Parisian aperitifs: a lively, quirky celebration of the City of Light... vintage Spicer: torrential, urbane, self-absorbed, smart, scattered and completely mesmerizing... you'll never get bored... a lively and clever celebration of Paris that uses humor and wry observation rather than cliché...” — Doug Fischer, Ottawa Citizen