“Paris in Stride: An Insider’s Walking Guide” by Jessie Kanelos Weiner & Sarah Moroz

This is a charming little book. I love it as a mere object, with its beautiful watercolor illustrations and the way it just feels good in my hand. I also loved reading through it. I think it would be a lovely book even if only to read and dream over, but it’s even nicer using it to plan.

The book is divided into seven main chapters, each proposing a walking route through one or two arrondissements (though it skips nearly a third of them; I don’t know Paris well enough to be sure of this, but I assume the features of the skipped ones are of less interest to a visitor than the ones in the book).

One quibble: the authors could easily have included the distance of each walking route. With the help of a Maps app I’m sure I can calculate the distances myself, but it would have been much simpler for me if the distances were part of each chapter. Alas, this is not one of those very specific guide books. It doesn’t give the dollar sign symbols to tell you how expensive restaurants are, or the hours of operation of the businesses, and the maps (as with all the other illustrations) are hand-drawn. It gives more of a general feeling of each place than a compendium of details. Which makes it much more fun to read through!

See how pretty?