Best of “The Intrepid Book Society”

Dear Readers,

After renewing its website, “Words in Ideas” is preparing its 3rd year of fresh new articles, starting in October. While you wait, you can read (or re-read) the best articles under the category “The Intrepid Book Society”. This “Society” is a fictional book club, analysing a book per month according to a keyword or a key place.

During the first year, articles were written as reviews. Here are the 5 best:

1. Key place: IRELAND | James Joyce
2. Keyword: INVESTIGATION | “The Judge and his Hangman”, by Friedrich Dürrenmatt
3. Keywords: ROMAN EMPIRE | “I, Claudius”, by Robert Graves
4. Key place: PARIS, FRANCE | “Das Parfum”, by Patrick Süskind
5. Key place: SIBERIA | “The Lost Pianos of Siberia”, by Sophy Roberts

In the 2nd year, fictional members discussed the plots between themselves. Here are the 5 best:

1. Keyword: MAIL | “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society”, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
2. Keyword: TIME | “L’anomalie” [“The Anomaly “], by Hervé Le Tellier
3. Keyword: FAMILY | “Hamnet”, by Maggie O’Farrell
4. Keyword: RELIGION | “Three Daughters of Eve”, by Elif Shafak
5. Keyword: WAR | “Das Boot”, by Lothar-Günther Buchheim
5. Keyword: HAPPINESS | “Le Petit Prince” [“The Little Prince”], by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

This 3rd year, “Words in Ideas” will test your knowledge (or, hopefully, making you curious in reading) the book of the month.

If you wish to comment or send suggestions, please fill in the form at the end of each website page.

Thank you!
Words in Ideas
https://wordsinideas.com/

Key place: PARIS, FRANCE | Le croissant

People can eat croissants at breakfast, in the afternoon, with tea or coffee, at lunch or as a snack, as bread or as a sweet. You can eat it by itself or add cheese, ham, butter, jam, cream, chocolate, spinach…. It is typically made with puff pastry (laminated dough filled with butter), which gives it that crunchy feeling we all love. Nowadays, there are different types of croissants, with different types of dough, but the shape is usually the same: a crescent shape.

“Croissant” means “crescent” in French. And “croissant” is a very typical French delicacy that has become incredibly popular. Except it was originally Austrian… and it only came to be in the 19th century, when an Austrian man opened a pastry shop to sell Austrian delicacies in Paris. These delicacies were based on a typical Austrian bread, with centuries of existence, which had a crescent shape.

No matter. “Le croissant” changed enough to become a French product that has been “exported” to the whole world and it is now quite different from that typical Austrian crescent bread. And, because food is always evolving and changing, croissants gave rise to many other similar delicacies, like the pain au chocolat. In truth, nowadays, you may find pastry called “croissants” without the typical crescent shape, but the spirit remains.

In literature, you can find some books with “croissant” in the title. Usually it is a romance, but it can be a rural crime mystery. However, most likely they are all set in France. There are also some references to croissants in films and TV series. Probably the “coolest” scene in the movies is when Meryl Streep (or rather, her character) bakes croissants from scratch.

Key place: PARIS, FRANCE | “Das Parfum”, by Patrick Süskind

Paris, 18th century. 51 years before the French Revolution, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born in the most stinking place in the most stinking city of the most stinking Kingdom: a fish market in Paris. This is how the story of the most exquisite perfumer begins.

Grenouille has no body smell and, because of that, he is feared. People are not afraid of him, they just feel he is different in a completely and unbeknownst way and just keep their distance. No one knows, except Grenouille himself, that he has an enormous gift: he can smell and precisely categorise all the smells (good and bad) in the world. He can also detect the tiniest fragrance that has travelled from far away. For Grenouille, who has no moral values, only this gift matters. So, killing to acquire the body smell of a particular person is just a collection method, nothing more.

We navigate through this story of smells through fabulous descriptions and enumerations. First, we learn how he survived when all circumstances were against him, then we learn how, little by little, he discovered and developed his gift. In the end, his wish comes true and he becomes a perfumer’s apprentice. Well, not much of apprenticeship, as he already knows how to mix the smells to obtain the most marvellous perfumes. However, some of those techniques are going to be surprisingly helpful for him to advance in his exploration of his gift… and his final goal, which will have a dramatic ending.

Patrick Süskind wrote the book and there are films and TV series based on it, like the 2006 film with Dustin Hoffman as the perfumer master, and the 2018 TV series produced in Germany.