Hi fellow readers, In a couple of months I'll be visiting Paris 😍 for the very first time. When I visit a city I like to prepare by reading a book set in the city so that I can relive the novel while I experience the city, its streets, monuments, food, and atmosphere.

Do you have any recommendations? I want to read a book where the city is not just a setting but becomes an integral part and protagonist of the story. For example, before visiting Barcelona I've re-read The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (one of my favourite novels) and then during my trip I got to actually visit one of the real places that where mentioned in the book 🤩!

Thanks in advance!

I probably should've looked this up sooner so I could know why Germaine was so gassed up about the thousands of "timbres" (stamps) she got in terms of their 'real' value v/s their perceived value to her. The ensemble is working class, so I figured the windfall was proportional to their struggles but I couldn't pin down how much it would be valued in a more literal sense. I figured these stamps were the equivalent of coupons, but since it didn't get around to giving a value on it as far as I've read, I went back to check.

Trying to find anything other than results showing the value of current collections of the Gold Star stamps as 'vintage' (getting the type from the Canadian encyclopedia article) has been a hassle. The closest I could get as a visual was from the 1960s If she got a thousand of these, and they were still 10 cents at the time of this play, that's $100 in 1970s CAD... so a little over 400 in present day CAD. That's crazy. If they scaled with inflation (doubtable), even crazier because that's like 1k!