The Book That Matters Most Read Online Free PDF

Of course, she’d followed a boy. Thomas, a sullen German philosophy student who had never said he would see her if she came to Paris. Thomas, who had promised her nothing and, when she showed up at his apartment in an ugly building on the outskirts of the city, had reminded her of that. “I did not invite you,” he said, though he had let her in and had hurried sex—her bent over his desk, him behind her with his pants around his ankles and the buttons on his shirt scraping against her.
    She’d gone back to him again, hopeful. Didn’t Paris make people fall in love? Find kindred spirits? Find themselves? But it was more of the same, this time on the scratchy rug. Afterward, as they shared a joint, she tried to remember why she had thought it was a good idea to leave Florence and follow him to Paris. She studied his face—long and narrow and impassive. “Maybe tomorrow we could meet at a bar?” she’d offered. He’d nodded vaguely, lit another joint, talked about a philosopher she’d never heard of. His voice buzzed pleasantly around her, his v’s sounding like w’s. Willage , he said. And wery .
    When he didn’t show up at the bar the next night, she didn’t even cry. She would stay in Paris, she decided. She would spend her father’s money that he’d deposited into her bank accountfor her year studying abroad, as if that could buy her forgiveness and make everything all right. In her small room in the hostel—a hard cot, a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, a broken chair—she’d taped a black and white postcard of Hemingway and Fitzgerald drinking in the Café Flore on the wall beside her bed, so that when she lay on her left side, she could stare at it, at them. She’d bought the postcard at one of the kiosks that lined the Seine, along with another one of the Eiffel Tower under construction. That one she taped above the bed, so she could see it as she lay on her back, which she did far too often when Paris was waiting for her outside. She liked the idea of looking at something that magnificent when it was only half-finished. Like her, she thought. Half-finished.
    She tried to find Ganymede’s, arguably the best bookstore in Paris for English-language books, the one her Lonely Planet and Let’s Go said not to miss. But it was in a maze of streets near the Pompidou Center and every time she decided to go, she got lost. “Où est Ganymede’s?” she’d ask, pointing to the map or the guidebook. Everyone knew the store, and they directed her, pointing and showing with their hands the confusing parts of the route. Still, she’d get lost, and instead of persevering she’d go back to her small room in the hostel. Don’t miss Ganymede’s Books, a quirky cluttered bookshop in the hip Marais section. The American owner, who goes simply by Madame, is a mercurial dragon who opens and closes the shop at her whim , said Frommer’s . She tore that page from the book someone had left behind at the hostel, with the store’s address and phone number on it, and kept it in her pocket. Once she even tried calling, but the number had been disconnected and she thought perhaps the iconic bookstore had actually gone out of business.
    Sometimes she met men in the cafés. Germans with architecturalhair and perfect English. Australians on their walkabout, living out of one giant backpack on a heavy metal frame that they hoisted easily onto their backs. Brits who had come for a long weekend, driving through the Chunnel—she loved that word, chunnel , and loved how they said it in their Beatles’ accents—and staying with friends from school. Skinny Japanese students wearing thick platform shoes. She tried to avoid Americans. She hadn’t come to Paris to meet Americans. But out of boredom or loneliness, occasionally she found herself letting an American guy buy her more wine, share his