Funnily enough, I am not usually one for compulsive buying. I read this week that a national survey has discovered that, on average, men spend £25 per week on such 'must have' purchases, compared with the average woman's paltry £19. My guess is that electronic 'gismos' whack up the male average, whereas us poor females indulge our lacklustre lives with lacy fripperies from the lingerie department, age defying 'maquillage' and exotically fragranced candles to raise our spirits after a particularly gruelling day. For better or worse, I've always been happy with Marks and Spencer's multi-packs and a jug of flowers from the garden!
But that was before Amazon! I have to confess to a massive addiction to Amazon's second hand book service. The knack is to try to ascertain the condition of the book that you want and see how many you can buy for less than a euro/pound. You do then, of course, have to factor in the £2.75 postage. For hardback books, there are unlimited bargains to be had, all at a fraction of their original RRP's. Having some years ago decided to build a library of French books at Bardies [rather more about the French, than in French, I have to say], it's rather nice to have a collection of books that have been read at least once. Guests feel less intimidated about borrowing them, although I do draw the line at leaving them down by the pool or left abandoned, baking on a chair in the heat of the midday sun.
My interest in the Cathars began some sixteen years ago, when we bought our first house near Mirepoix. It had been a Cathar castle and there was an old medieval forge in the grounds, as well as a beautiful Romanesque chapel. As a history graduate, I had always known that history is written by the victors but the story of the Cathars became, for a little while, an obsession. Books on the subject were few and far between then. Yves Roquette's seminal book, 'Cathars', Zoe Oldenburg's ' Massacre at Montsegur', [the first populist account of the Cathars in the English language, translated by classical scholar, Peter Green] and Emmanuele Roy Ladurie's story of 'Montaillou' were about it. I hoovered them up and went on pilgrimages to every single Cathar castle in the region, buying guide books along the way whenever and wherever I could. We had some fine picnics at places with enticing names, like Roquefixade, Peyrpeteuse and Queribus.
When we moved west, to Bardies, it took a few years to turn what is now the 'biblioteque' from an earth floored woodshed [with two tree trunks holding up the bedroom floor above!] into a stunning faux Louis Quatorze room, with a run of ceiling height bookshelves covering a whole wall. Just about the time that the building work was completed, Amazon took off. It has to be the best internet shopping site ever, n'est-ce-pas! Ten years earlier, assembling a relevant library would have been a lifetime's work. Now, with 'one click', your fingers do the work and your bank manager takes a deep intake of breath.
I started, inevitably, with history books: Carlisle's 'History of the French Revolution' was an early purchase, a Folio edition no less, and William Doyle's 1990 classic, 'The Oxford History of the French Revolution', followed by Georges Lefebvre's 'The French Revolution' [Routledge Classics] and Christopher Hibbert's marvellous 2001 book, also, unoriginally, called 'The French Revolution'. I found Simon Schama's 'Citizens' [2004] and the first of Jonathan Sumption's books on the Hundred Years War, 'Trial by Battle' [1999] in a charity shop. I paid a bit more for Ruth Scurr's 'Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution' [2007] and Jonathan Sumption's 1999 history, 'The Albigensian Crusade'. Then I bit the bullet and bought the second and third books in the Sumption trilogy, 'Trial by Fire' [2001] and 'Divided Houses' [2009], new from Amazon. I haven't read either yet but the others I loved.
Then, like a drug addict moving up a notch for an even bigger hit, I graduated to biographies: Christopher Hibbert's 'Napoleon: His Wives and Women', Nancy Mitford's 'The Sun King' and 'Madame de Pompadour', both found in charity shops, Antonia Frazer's wonderful 'Marie Antoinette', as well as her 'Love and Louis X1V: The Women in the Life of the Sun King', David Lawday's 'Danton, A Life' [2009], Leonie Frieda's 'Catherine de Medici' [2004], and all of Graham Robb's scholarly reads' 'Baudelaire' [1989], 'Balzac' [1995], 'Victor Hugo' [1998] and 'Rimbaud' [2001.
Amazon has a lot to answer for, for my addiction knows no bounds. Other all time favourite reads accumulated on the biblioteque shelves are Caroline Moorehead's, 'Dancing to the Precipice', Montaigne's 'Essays', Hilary Mantel's, 'A Place of Greater Safety', Graham Robb's, 'The Discovery of France' and 'Parisians', Adam Zamoyski's '1812: Napoleon's Fatal March on Moscow', Marcel Proust's, 'A la Recherche du Temps Perdu', everything by Irene Nemirovsky but especially 'Suite Francaise' and, of course, Baroness Orzcy's 'The Scarlet Pimpernel', my favourite read as a young girl and through which I discovered my love of history.
There are loads more. There are lots of books on people's new lives in France, some good, most tedious, the novels of Flaubert and Zola and their contemporaries, travel books, art books [long on Picasso!], garden books, books on the prehistoric caves, books on the villages of France, books on wine, cognac and, because no collection of mine could exist without them, books on food. The French cookery library is my pride and joy [and possibly the ruin of me!]. From Larousse to Elisabeth David and Gerard Depardieu, and Richard Olney and Trish Deseine to the blogger, Clothilde Dusoulier, there is, I think, something to inspire everyone to put on their apron and have a go in the kitchen.
And, finally, there is music to listen to and movies to put your feet up to on a rainy day: Jaques Brel, Serge Gainsbourg, Piaf, Billie Holliday, Georges Brassens, Stefan Grapelli, Django, Francoise Hardy and, God forbid, even the First Lady's humble efforts. It was too easy to buy them all with one click! Then, as if these two addictions weren't enough, 'World Cinema' sales on Amazon proved even more irresistible. I now have to hover by the postbox to squirrel my purchases furtively away before I am seen with the evidence. Not wishing to incriminate myself any further, this blog has become, conveniently, too long already to name them all here. Having become an addict of the French crime thriller, 'Spiral', on BBC4 on Saturday nights, I will admit to indulging in the DVD of the first two series.
When, oh when, will this compulsion end? With apologies to Dr Johnson, 'The man[or woman!] who tires of Amazon, tires of life.' Who needs a new frock when you can curl up in bed with a great book?
