A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle

I bought this book in Brisbane, a long way from Provence together with It’s Raining in Mango, my first Penguins. Speaking of Penguins I highly recommend the “Operation Nest Build” clip from Frozen Plant.

I loved the book. I didn’t realize it was such a cult hit. It celebrated 20 years recently and it has inspired many other similar books since. I read an interview where the author revealed that paparazzi were going to their home and waiting around for photo opportunities. And this was not only during summer, tourist season. Appalling who would do that ??? Well, to be fair, as I was going through the book I started making mental notes of names of places or things for us to poke around when we will go around. Maybe not the author’s home unless we accidentally drove by it, but there was a particular olive oil farm I started researching to see if we could go for the weekend but then I paced myself since first of all a lot of things could have changed in 20 years and the second reason is that there is no point going for just a weekend. We will do our research when we go for a good few weeks.

It is such a feel good book, and as a sign of great success I did laugh out loud by myself in the bus while reading it. The other day I screamed when a nice guy woke me up when we arrived and he was helpful enough to not let me go on my hour-long journey one more time. It must be slightly amusing to watch me on this bus – a time lapse would show me laughing, crying, sleeping and getting startled.

The lecture is so much fun that it makes you open a savings account and start dreaming of a relocation opportunity. It is a book that just rejoices a beautiful life, less complicated joys such as country living, food and nosey, friendly people. While reading the book, I also found the TV show and tried to prolong the pleasure by watching it but for some reason it didn’t click the same way.

Until we finally get our goat and have our 12 month journal, we shall keep rejoicing balcony gardens, home made goodies, turning our house upside down every time we decide to make something new …  our own little beautifully organized chaos. Happy 2012! Oh and my aunt’s goat is having a baby soon :).