My obsessions

I can be a bit obsessive, it's true. A lifetime of obsessions ranging from scouring flea markets to collecting children's books (even before I actually had a child, *blush*) to inspecting every single stall of the farmer's market seem to have come to a head here in Paris. It seems like just about everything I obsess over is right here in front of me or a short search away. A couple of weekends ago, we went to the old book market at Porte de Vanves, a former butcher's market. I wasn't looking for anything in particular, but it was so dreamy to just wander from table to table, waiting for something to call out to me. And, of course, soon enough, I came across a bilingual French-Russian volume of Soviet children's stories. Ah, the Soviets, one of my strange obsessions- maybe because I am a child of the 80s, maybe because I am fascinated by the strange impact of the Soviets on Cuba in their heyday, maybe because I am just weird. I walked away from the book and kept thinking about it, through the rest of a lovely afternoon at the Parc George Bressons next to the book market, through a trip to an outpost of amazing French bakery Poilane, through the eating of an entire bag of beignets. So I went back, afraid that maybe someone else had snapped up that random children's book in the few hours that had elapsed or that perhaps the proprietor had realized its true value and suddenly tripled the price! Or decided not to sell it! (Ah, the inner workings of the obsessive mind.) But no, there it was, mine for the taking for just two Euros. The children's reading primer, all in Russian, that was lying beneath the story book, however, I left there. And I have been thinking about it ever since...

Some of the other things I've been obsessing over are French cooking magazines and French children's books. Luckily, they're both quite useful to have around when I have to feed a family daily and read a minimum of three books at bedtime to Malanga Girl, plus at least another one or two during the rest of the day. There's no other adjective but charmant (charming) to accurately convey the lure of French children's books. Our shelves will be groaning and sighing under the weight of so many books before we leave this country. And our bellies will be full of French-cooking-magazine goodness.