Friday Finds

What great books did you hear about / discover this week?

I found:

Actually, Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik found me. I received a copy of this book via my book club's gift exchange.

Excerpt:

My first images of Paris had come from the book adaptation of The Red Balloon, the wonderful Albert Lamorisse movie about a small boy in the Parisian neighborhood of Menilmontant who gets a magic, slightly overeager balloon, which follows him everywhere and is at last destroyed by evil boys with rocks. Curiously, it was neither a cozy nor a charming landscape. The Parisian grown-ups all treated Pascal, the boy, with a severity bordering on outright cruelty: His mother tosses the balloon right out of the Haussmannian apartment; the bus conductor shakes his head and finger and refuses to allow the balloon on the tram; the principal of the school locks him in a shed for bringing the balloon to class. The only genuine pleasure I recall that he finds in this unsmiling and rainy universe is when he leaves the balloon outside a tempting-looking bakery and goes in to buy a cake. The insouciance with which he does it--cake as a right, not a pleasure--impressed me a lot. A scowling gray universe relieved by pastry: This was my first impression of Paris, and of them all, it was not the farthest from the truth.

I'm eager to read this book. After all, it's a memoir which I love and it'll transport me to Paris. Ooh la la...

Share your finds either by leaving a link to your own Friday Finds post or if you don't have a blog, in your comment. ~Thanks~

Eager for more finds? Sashay over to Should Be Reading.