I enjoyed this book so much-- contributions from some of my absolute favorite authors, taking place in a city I love.

3.5 stars that I rounded up. One thing I notice about travel stories is that they frequently converge on the same theme, which is that if you plan your own trip, it is necessary to embrace the change, messiness, and deviations from the plan that inevitably arise when things don't follow your neat itinerary. Nearly every story in the collection makes this point in some way, and it's a resonant one with me because it mirrors my own experiences with increasing my psychological flexibility as a frequent traveler.

A Paris All Your Own, like nearly all collections, is uneven in the quality of its contributions, but there were a couple I enjoyed very much: MJ Rose, J Courtney Sullivan, Paula McLain (the last line especially), and Maggie Shipstead (begrudgingly, because I saw a lot of myself in her cloistering in a fancy part of a famous new city).

The preface acknowledges the lack of diversity in the chosen authors, which I'd like to echo here. To some extent, this is a function of the fact that all the authors had to have published a book that in some way contains Paris, and class demographics make this likely to be financially comfortable, straight white women. But it would have been a better book, and a richer experience, to nix this requirement in favor of just including "women writers who have been to Paris" and curate a more diverse collection.

I am not a world traveler. I don’t dream of visiting Paris but I love to read about Paris. The Paris of different eras, different stations in life, and for different people all intrigue me.

This collection of short stories about Paris is wonderful. I love that not every short story is the same. There are stories of family visits, stories of visiting the tourist stops, stories of the art and galleries, and stories of not enjoying Paris. There were so many different views and perspectives of visiting, living, and seeing Paris that I found myself devouring each one. I was anxious to get to the next story.

Between each story there were short bios of the authors along with their likes, dislikes, and memories of Paris which I found informative. It was interesting to learn a little about the authors along with what influenced their memories of Paris.

Whether you have visited Paris, dream of visiting Paris, or just like to live vicariously through what you read this is a great collection of short stories.

"A collection of all-new Paris-themed essays written by some of the biggest names in women’s fiction, including Paula McLain, Therese Anne Fowler, Maggie Shipstead, and Lauren Willig, edited by Eleanor Brown, the New York Times bestselling author of The Weird Sisters and The Light of Paris.

“My time in Paris,” says New York Times–bestselling author Paula McLain (The Paris Wife), “was like no one else’s ever.” For each of the eighteen bestselling authors in this warm, inspiring, and charming collection of personal essays on the City of Light, nothing could be more true.

While all of the women writers featured here have written books connected to Paris, their personal stories of the city are wildly different. Meg Waite Clayton (The Race for Paris) and M. J. Rose (The Book of Lost Fragrances) share the romantic secrets that have made Paris the destination for lovers for hundreds of years. Susan Vreeland (The Girl in Hyacinth Blue) and J. Courtney Sullivan (The Engagements) peek behind the stereotype of snobbish Parisians to show us the genuine kindness of real people.

From book club favorites Paula McLain, Therese Anne Fowler (Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald), and anthology editor Eleanor Brown (The Light of Paris) to mystery writer Cara Black (Murder in the Marais), historical author Lauren Willig (The Secret History of the Pink Carnation), and memoirist Julie Powell (Julie and Julia), these Parisian memoirs range from laugh-out-loud funny to wistfully romantic to thoughtfully somber and reflective.

Perfect for armchair travelers and veterans of Parisian pilgrimages alike, readers will delight in these brand-new tales from their most beloved authors."

I think you all know why I'm excited for this book? LAUREN WILLIG!

I must start this review by telling you that I travel a lot and Paris is absolutely my favorite city to visit. If I was a little younger and a lot braver, I would probably live there but I think its a little late in life for me to make such a change. I love reading books about Paris when I can't be there and this book didn't disappoint me - in fact, I loved it. I have read books by all 18 of the authors who contributed and since they all write different types of books, the essays all took different slants on their love or lack of love for Paris. As with any anthology, I loved some of the essays and wasn't too crazy about others. Whether you've visited Paris or want to visit or just enjoy reading about that beautiful city, this is a great book to read.

A lighthearted a varied collection that will give you a glimpse into both the Paris experience and the writing life.

A thoroughly enjoyable glimpse at living, loving, writing, and eating in Paris. A delightful guidebook for anyone hoping to spend a few days, a few weeks, or an open-ended interlude in the City of Light.

A Fun read which shows very different sides of the romantic image of Paris most people have, whether they have been there or not

This is a compilation of stories about Paris from authors who've written books based in Paris. There are nineteen stories that range from love off Paris, love in Paris and not loving Paris so much at all.

Chapters:
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a French Woman
Too Much Paris
Paris is Your Mistress
A Myth, a Museum, and a Man
French for "Intrepid"
Paris, Lost and Found
Failing At Paris
The Passion of Routine
Investigating Paris
My Paris Dreams
We'll Never Have Paris
Reading Paris
Finding Paris's Hidden Past
Secret Eatings
Until We Meet Again
A Good Idea?
Paris Alone
Thirty-Four Things You Should Know About Paris
What is it about Paris?

"No other city's name conjures the same weight and cachet. To invoke Paris means something, makes whatever it touches more beautiful, more elegant, more...well, Parisian. Paris is berets and cafes, is romance and the lights on the Eiffel Tower, is wide boulevards and window boxes bright with flowers, is Les Miserables and Picasso and Chanel. Paris is so many things, all of them wonderful."  -Eleanor Brown
"Through a company called Paris Walks, I hire a private guide, Brad, who takes us around Montmartre, where he lives. I have been before, but now I notice new things... Before, in Paris, I was always self-conscious. Did I sound like a stupid American? Was my accent atrocious? But in the role of writer, I'm too curious to care" -J. Courtney Sullivan
"Travel meant staying in a nice hotel room and eating in fine restaurants. It meant an easy roller bag, not, say a backpack that required lugging while drenched in sweat. It was reading an interesting book in a busy cafe while dressed like Aubrey Hepburn. It meant Paris in the springtime, just like the song..." -Megan Crane
"What I wanted to do was lie on that bed and try to recover from my arrogant assumption that not speaking the language would not be a problem or that doing something that scared me would make me less scared while I was doing it. Possibly in the fetal position." -Megan Crane
"And the people...well, the people, as Eddie Izzard says, 'are kind of fucking French at times.' Paris can literally drive you crazy. Or not. Maybe Paris isn't the problem. Maybe, as with Paris Syndrome, it's us and our expectations of it. Maybe it wasn't Paris at all. Maybe it was me." - Eleanor Brown
I've been to Paris. For me it's a beautiful city full of museums and artifacts. It's beauty is matched by it's overwhelming smell of urine (I was there during the summer and let me tell you the city of lights doesn't smell great in the heat of the day). The food was out of this world and plentiful. My fondest memory was sitting at a Parisian cafe eating a charcuterie platter and people watching. 

I was overwhelmed by the amount of people. Every place we went was crowded and hot. There was long lines for most everything. This book taught me that I did Paris wrong. Well, maybe not wrong, but I had a first time experience that's not abnormal. I saw all the highlights that I've seen in the movies. I experienced the tourist side of Paris. A Paris All Your Own encouraged me to go back and experience the outskirts of Paris. The small cafes and shops. The smaller, less well known museums that hold just as much beauty at the Louvre. 

We will make it back to Paris someday and I will use many of these stories as a guide book!

This is a great read to dream about the city of lights through other people's experiences.

I'll preface this with the fact that I have never been to Paris, but am obsessed with reading about it......if a title or book description has Paris in it, I. am. in.

This book of 18 essays includes an astounding collection of female writers, all with books set in Paris, and provides a thoroughly well-rounded take on visiting, as well as living and writing in (and about!) Paris. I say well-rounded not because the essays cover all different topics (although many do), but because the authors are refreshingly diverse on their feelings about Paris. This is a love letter to Paris, but it's also a letter home to your parents from Paris-camp about why it's not as amazing as Mom promised and you really just want to go home. There is love, but there is also loneliness. There are amazing sights and experiences, but there are also rainy days and an inability to communicate in French.

There are essays that are laugh-out-loud funny, and there are essays that are incredibly detailed accounts of the history of Paris during different time periods, as well as essays about mother-daughter relationships and romantic relationships - and more! I adored reading about how these authors all wrote about Paris, but also how they researched their books and ensured the authenticity of their stories. Authors who weren't able to visit Paris before starting their books, but read and read and read extensively and went to Paris later.

It's hard to really describe this whole book since it's such a diverse range of essays, but here are my overall takeaways:

1) I still want to visit Paris
2) I should learn French, but even if I do it won't be usable in Paris so I should just speak English and admit that I'm a tourist
3) Go without an agenda or schedule
4) Sit and watch people
5) Eat all the food
6) Drink all the wine
7) Hotel rooms are small
8) SO MUCH HISTORY
9) Lines for major attractions are so so long - buy tickets ahead if you can, maybe skip some of the most touristy stuff
10) Walk and walk and walk and see the REAL Paris

This is a must-read for anyone who longs to visit Paris, or reads books set in Paris.....or anyone who loves reading about writing in general!

A collection of essays on Paris compiled by Eleanor Brown including authors such as Paula McLain, Julie Powell and my favorite by Susan Vreeland. This is a wonderful, enjoyable read!

"My time in Paris was like no one else's ever."

"In the end, I think Paris kept us married for an extra five years."

"I should probably write an article for a women's magazine about this: 'Lose Weight While Eating Your Feelings in Paris!'"

A Paris All Your Own is a collection of essays by bestselling women's fiction authors about their experiences, good and bad, in the City of Light. All of the authors have written books connected to Paris, their stories ranging from romance to history to crime, all centered on the city.

But their impressions of the legendary, storied city diverge from there, as they all relate what the city meant to them and what they took away from their time and work there. Some had connections to romantic love lost or found there, others to familial love, recalling family trips or meaningful mother-daughter moments. Editor Eleanor Brown employs a writerly angle as focus, wanting the tales of women who have crafted bestselling fiction from the city and who can tell the tales of their inspiration.

She asked the women to tell the stories behind the stories, their truthful answers about what they thought and felt in and about the city, what it really meant to them and their work. And that's what we have, and it's absolutely lovely in its own way, even if it could've been something much deeper.

Brown had an interesting reason for her own Parisian research: she'd learned that her grandmother had lived for a time in Paris in her youth, and it happened to be during the dizzying Jazz Age 1920s, when Paris overflowed with writers, poets, musicians, artists, and dancers in a Bohemian paradise.

My favorite essay was Maggie Shipstead's, "Paris Alone", exploring the value of solitude and how she embraced it during her residency at an artist's complex in the Marais. Maybe it spoke to me because I can say from experience that Paris is both an excellent and a sad place to live alone, somehow. It's an incomparable feeling to wander the streets and soak it all in, exploring without any agenda or obligation, but at the same time it's a city of lovers and excitement and shared experience, and there's something tricky about being alone there, even when you're working.

They all do seem to have in common walking, the quiet, solitary time of observation spent wandering unfamiliar streets. Paris is perfect for that. And all that walking and alone time, often the separation through language, leads to a lot of soul-searching and self-actualization. Those might have been my favorite moments throughout the collection. Megan Crane writes this in "French for Intrepid", which struck me:

"The trouble with running away, it would not occur to me for years, was that no matter what place or which people I left behind in a cloud of dust when I decided it was time to go, I took me right along..."

And this wise warning from Therese Ann Fowler after tracing the footsteps of the troubled Zelda Fitzgerald: "But the light says, consider, too, what - or who - you're bringing with you. Consider what all of that weighs. Expectation can be impossibly heavy, depending."

This book was so sentimental for me, almost painfully so, as Paris was my first ever home away from home, the first place I lived abroad on work assignments while I still lived in New York. It made me long for that time so much, and I suspect that anyone else who has lived, worked, and loved in the city will feel the same way.

They explore a range of topics, from the city's storied history and its most famous art and landmarks (including the overrated ones)

The end of each essay includes some picks from the writer, like must-dos, what's skippable, favorite Paris songs, and favorite/least favorite Paris moments. It's a bit too cutesy, but works for the travelogue aspect.

Brown writes in her introduction of her experience not quite loving Paris during the time she spent there researching her book.

"...Paris, for all the wonder it contains, is just a city. It has its pretty parts and its grimy parts, its rude citizens and its friendly ones, its nice museums and its tourist traps. It felt, to me, more similar to any other big city than different. So if it is just another city, why are we obsessed with it?"

I think the answer to that question is what it allows us to learn about ourselves, our relationships to others and our place in the world, and as a fabled, historic site of both bloody revolutions and beautiful fairy tales, it's helped many of us figure those tough questions out.

A quick and light read, the perfect appetizer for an upcoming Parisian visit, or for someone already in love with the city and happy to reminisce. Great summer vacation reading.

I was thrilled to be given a chance to read this book by NetGalley. I'm preparing for my first ever trip to Paris, and I knew I wanted to read this. I'm a fan of practically every woman who wrote an essay, and follow some of them religiously. I inhaled the book in one sitting and then went back to re-read it more leisurely. I'm planning on buying a copy for myself, and for the other three women I'll be traveling with. This is a must read for anyone who has been to Paris, plans on visiting Paris, or just simply loves "All Things Paris." Five stars and I would give it ten if they were available to give.