Peter Mayle Books and Movies

If you don't know Peter Mayle's books, you should read at least the first one, A Year in Provence. It was written when Mayle lived just outside Menerbes and is a warm and charming account of an English couple's first year living there and renovating their farmhouse. It also serves as a good guide to the Luberon's attractions, markets and restaurants. There are two sequels, Toujours Provence and Encore Provence.

A Year in Provence

Toujours Provence

Encore Provence

If you know A Year in Provence and its sequels, you may want to see the TV series made by the BBC in the early 1990s, starring John Thaw as Peter Mayle, and available on DVD.

A Year in Provence (DVD)

 

A Good Year (the book)

The one Peter Mayle book to make it to Hollywood is his novel A Good Year, which was made into a film by Ridley Scott, starring Russell Crowe as a city trader who inherits a winery in the Luberon - actually Chateau la Canorgue in Bonnieux. If you have been to the Luberon you will recognise many of the villages and locations where it was filmed, and if you have not been yet, it will make you want to come.

A Good Year (the movie)

 

Other books penned by Peter Mayle and set in Provence or France...

French Lessons

French Lessons: Adventures with Knife, Fork, and Corkscrew: part travelogue, part celebration of French gastronomy.

Hotel Pastis

Mayle's first novel is set in Provence and is the comic story of a bored ad exec who takes on a hotel in the Luberon - complications soon set in though...

Provence A-Z

An anecdotal encyclopaedia with life in Provence as its theme, written with his customary humour, charm and whimsy.

 

Have you thought about a Kindle?
Rather than pack a ton of books for your trip to Europe, you could get a Kindle , an electronic book reader that can download and store up to 3,500 books, as well as your usual newspapers or magazines. There are over 850,000 titles to choose from on Amazon. I was very impressed by the screen on the new Kindle, it is as easy to read as a book. The Kindle comes in two flavors, one with 3G and one without:

 

What the reviews say about the Kindle:

"New Kindle leaves rivals farther back." - New York Times

"Kindle's winning combination of noteworthy upgrades—an improved screen, better battery life, lighter weight, and lower price—vaults it to the top of the e-book reader category." - CNet

"Simply put, it's the best dedicated ebook reader you can buy… Amazon has managed to increase the contrast on the Kindle in a way that sets it above the Nook, Sony Readers, or any other dedicated ebook reader we've tested." - PC Magazine