Booklist Review

If you love Paris, you love cafes. Journalist Boyer loves cafes, and with the practiced lens of photographer Eric Morin accompanying her, she ushers the privileged reader-viewer of their delightful collaboration on a spin around Paris, to other urban areas of France, and out to places in the French countryside, seeking cafes of particular distinction or charm. "For the price of a cup of coffee you can stay as long as you want" is the philosophy of cafes; and all the cafes Boyer and Morin feature simply beg to be patronized for hours on end. Her prose imparts a good history of French cafes and their sociological and cultural place; his photos of exteriors and interiors are beautifully evocative. A helpful directory for travelers is appended, listing "a hundred cafes of character in and around Paris and in the provinces of France, chosen for their decor, location or ambience." Not an essential library purchase, but a perfectly pleasurable one. ~--Brad Hooper