Bestselling French novelist says, “What city could be more romantic than London?” Incroyable! Mais attente, that’s not all. He also rejected the critics who don’t like his writing. Speaking of himself, he said, “Critics say that Marc Levy is an author one reads in the subway… Nothing makes me happier than being read in the subway. If I allow people to get out of the tunnel, in a small way, I’ve done my job.”

In other news, the director of the History Channel in France has a new book on how the French endured the Nazi occupation, and it isn’t flattering. Author Patrick Buisson said, “It may hurt our national pride, but the reality is that people adapted to occupation.” By adapted, he means, fornicated in many ways and, I assume, for various reasons. “The result [is] that the birth rate shot up in 1942 even though 2,000,000 men were locked up in the camps.”

I don’t post this to take cheap shots at the French. On the contrary, I wish they would repent of throwing out the Huguenots and get back to building healthy lives for the glory of God.

David Laskin reviews one of Naipaul‘s books.

Naipaul calls the book “an essay in five parts,” as if to impose some sort of unity or occasion on what is essentially a collection of musings on random irritants. The early success of his fellow countryman Derek Walcott, Flaubert’s exotic prose opera “Salammbô,” Gandhi’s mysterious hold over the soul of India — these are among subjects Naipaul swirls in his imagination like an after-dinner brandy. But in the end, the laureate leaves us more muddled than intoxicated.

I thought Susan Wise Bauer was working on an ancient history series, but somehow she squeezed in a modern history book called, The Art of the Public Grovel. Her publisher sent her an image of the cover. Eye-catching. Who is man? I know I’ve seen him somewhere recently.

Terry Whalin keeps talking about one of his books and answering Why Novelists Need Book Proposals That Sell. A great story isn’t all you need to sell your book.