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Savoring Living Water: How to Have an Effective Quiet Time
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Child Friendly South Africa delivers all-inclusive and up-to-date listings for a wide range of child...
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From the creator of the #1 Food and Drink App, 101 Juice Recipes, comes a new collection of...
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The Honor List (2018)
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At the start of high school, Piper, Sophie, Isabella and Honor think they will be best friends...
Kara Skinner (332 KP) rated Confessions of an Expat in Paris in Books
Sep 16, 2019
Paris Potty Girl details her first few years in Paris, from bar-hopping to getting her first apartment to meeting her husband and Paris Potty Trainer, of course, details pregnancies and getting used to parenthood.
Confessions of an Expat in Paris is an anthology of anecdotes spanning across both these eras in Vicki Lesage’s life. You’ll learn about the cheesy and downright weird pick-up lines she received from French guys as well as the time she might have eaten part of her friend’s thumb.
Yep, you read that last sentence right.
Each anecdote is paired with a drink recipe, many of which sound really good. I can’t wait to try the mulled gin recipe.
Mulled Gin
For when you need to recover from face mask fails
1 bottle of red wine
12 oz. gin
1 teaspoon honey
1 oz. orange juice
1 oz. lemon juice
1 cinnamon stick
Add all the ingredients to a pot
Stir and Simmer until honey is dissolved
Serve warm
I really enjoyed Expat in Paris. The stories are usually hilarious and sometimes just a little bit cringy in a good way. Others are sweet and make me smile, like when she was on her honeymoon with her husband.
With her first two books, I felt like there was more of an overall story instead of disjointed anecdotes. As much as I liked being able to enjoy a quick and witty snapshot of her life before I had to get back to my own, I think I preferred the more continuous storyline in Party Girl and Potty Trainer.
While some of the stories were without a doubt hilariously absurd, like her boss’s father asking about how her vaginal rejuvenation was coming along in front of her coworkers (what the everloving fuck), others were less climactic. Lesage included an entire chapter about how she’s an awkward dancer, except when she did the Dirty Dancing move with her brother on her wedding.
A perfect wedding dance move.
The dancing chapter felt more like a summary than a specific moment in her life, which made my eyes glaze over. And she only casually mentioned what could have been some good stories, like her drunkenly dancing on tabletops in public. I would have loved a complete chapter about one of those times, but they are only mentioned now and then.
Vicki Lesage often makes me laugh out loud when reading her books. Her chapter “10 Ways Living in Paris is Like Dental Work” will always make me smile. She talks about how both involve interesting flavors, a lot of paperwork, and a lot of money, and I’ll go “Oh shit, she’s right.”
Now and then, however, her jokes miss the mark. At one point she veered off-topic to stage an imaginary trial to defend herself against herself for eating so much Ben and Jerry’s ice cream and then, within the trial, she goes even more off-topic by talking about how France doesn’t have Phish Food flavor until I just wanted to skip the chapter.
As of this review, I still haven’t tried any of the drink recipes, but I trust a former hardcore drinker like Vicki Lesage to come up with some good drinks, although I don’t think I’ll ever try The Fluoride Treatment because, well, ew. Not the drink itself, but the name. Even though it’s relevant to the chapter, I’m weirdly squeamish.
However, most of these drinks are probably not for amateurs like me, who drink wine out of a box and can’t tell the difference between Stella Artois and Schlitz (I’m guessing. I’ve never actually had Schlitz. But Stella Artois tastes like every other beer to me).
With the exception of the mulled gin, most of the drink recipes require either a martini shaker or a blender. You can probably mostly pull off these recipes without either, though. Just don’t take a page out of Lesage’s book and use lite pancake syrup instead of honey.
I rate Confessions of an Expat in Paris 4 out of 5 stars. It’s a hilarious book that I recommend to anyone who wants a light-hearted memoir.
Roxanne (13 KP) rated Leaving is My Colour in Books
Nov 14, 2018
____ 4.5 'Dysfunctional' stars
This book appealed to my dark sense of humour so much. Rachel is smart, witty and very funny, she is lost, dysfunctional and a little bit crazy. I liked her a lot.
After her family becomes very wealthy, Rachel gets mixed up in numerous failed marriages, drink, drugs and many trips to rehab. All she wants is to escape from the pits of 'rock-bottom', but can she do this by chasing unrealistic expectations? Will she accept help from her ultimately flawed family? This is her story.
Beatriz (138 KP) rated Plant Nanny in Apps
Nov 24, 2018
You chose a baby plant and a pot, then you insert your weight and how active you are, after that the app will tell you how much water do you need and you can chose a bottle where later you simply have to click on when you drink the amount of water that the bottle has, that will water the plant and the plant will grow. Later it will go to a garden and give you seeds so you can get a new one.
Warning: if you spend too long without drinking water your plant will die