Giveaway: Grape Escapes, Memoirs, and a Market Basket

Note: This giveaway was planned before the horrible attacks on Paris on 13 November, but I think celebrating Laura Bradbury’s love of France is a way of honoring what so many people have found when they’ve gone abroad. Travel makes the world much smaller, and turns every person we meet into potential friends, and strangers into people we care about across great distances. Paris, nous sommes tellement désolé.

Last year, and again this year, I met author Laura Bradbury at the Surrey International Writers Conference (NB: if you like thoughtful, accessible, intimate, inclusive and terrific writers conferences, I can’t say enough good things about the SiWC). In 2014, I heard about My Grape Escape, her memoir about buying and restoring a French home in Burgundy — and you know that memoirs about starting life over in a new location and in new directions are very much my catnip. I learned a lot about French home repair and restoration, and dealing with small town bureaucracy, which is worse than knob and tube wiring, I’m pretty sure.

This year, Laura was signing My Grape Year, the story of how she ended up in France in the first place as an exchange student, and how she met her now-husband, Franck. AND she was giving away these gorgeous French market baskets at the signing for SIWC. Seriously. They’re beautiful. So when we were part of the same dinner group, I asked if I could do a giveaway for one of the baskets, and the books as well. And because Laura is Canadian and required by law to be nice, she said yes, and then she probably said sorry for something she didn’t do, which is also required by Canadian law. The market baskets are really nice, too –  I’m so excited to be giving one away.

My Grape Year
A | BN | K | AB
I liked My Grape Escape and My Grape Year because they combine a lot of things I enjoy in a memoir: new locations, fish-out-of-water experiences (and as a former fellow exchange student, a lot of what Laura describes was very familiar), deciding to take a mulligan and do-over a major decision in one’s life – like I said, catnip ahoy. I haven’t read My Grape Village yet, but it’s on the TBR.

Laura uses her market basket as a general all-purpose bag – and there’s plenty of room inside.

 

Market basket with purple leather handles
Isn’t it pretty? It holds a LOT, too.

For our giveaway, we have copies of Laura’s memoirs about life in France, My Grape Escape, My Grape Year, and My Grape Village, in paper or ebook, winner’s choice, and a market basket to put your books or your e-reader in — also winner’s choice. You can carry both if you want, obviously. We won’t judge.

So, want to enter? YAY! Drop a comment below and tell us about a place that changed you in some way. For me, it was Spain, when I was an exchange student at 15 and again at 20. For Laura, it was Burgundy. What about you? Is there a place that is deeply important to you, that changed your life? Nearby, far away, on the couch next to you? Tell us about it.

 I’ll select a winner at random on Friday 20 November, and announce the winner same day. Standard disclaimers apply: void where prohibited. I’m not being compensated for this giveaway. Open to international residents where permitted by applicable law. Must be over 18 and prepared to read and possibly also crave wine and maybe even snails. Do not read these books while hungry. I am not even kidding about that. Not even about the snails.

Thank you to Laura Bradbury for the giveaway, and the market basket, and the written taste of France.

Winner winner! The winner of the market basket and the Grape series is Christine! Congratulations, and thank you, everyone, for sharing your memorable and life-changing travels.

 

Comments are Closed

  1. Lori says:

    A trip to France when I was a senior in high school. The world is so huge and to be immersed in a language I had been studying for four years and yet felt so inadequate when speaking it there was very humbling. Also, it affirmed my life long dream (which will never come true because it’s highly impractical) of living in France. It is everything and nothing I imagined. What is on my practical wish list is to return on my own terms (instead of as part of a group where every day is planned) and just discover everything.

  2. Trix says:

    Seattle was the first place I ever spent time away from home, and I was surprised at how much easier it was than I thought it would be. London definitely taught me a lot from a logistics standpoint…I don’t think I ever would have learned to get around the Bay Area if I hadn’t spent a month sussing out the Tube!

  3. Violet Bick says:

    The space between my bed and the wall.

    Growing up, my sister and I shared a room. Two twin beds, no privacy, and I loved to read. The only place that was my own was the narrow space between my bed and the wall. Surrounded by books, it was there that I discovered whole new worlds.

  4. Drew says:

    For me it was France. Europe in general, but France in particular. I lived in there for 2 years after college, working as an au pair, and a language teaching assistant, and I loved it. There is something about living abroad that really appealed to me as an introvert, and the lifestyle there was so wonderful. I am an insomniac – have been all my life, but I can sleep there! I think it has to do with the laid-back pace of life… I would move back in a heartbeat given the chance.

  5. Annamarie V says:

    A couple of places have changed my life and one of them is Paris, I feel very much at home there I find the people of the city to be very friendly.

  6. JulieR says:

    My trip to Vanuatu certainly changed my viewpoint. I had never been to a place that was so primitive. Though I did stay in a couple of modern hotels, I also stayed in guest houses and homes that had no electricity and no plumbing. The scenery was beautiful and the people were very welcoming.

  7. Mary K says:

    My first trip to England. I felt like I had gotten to visit a fantasy world about which I had previously only visited in books.

  8. Ooh, what a great giveaway! My life-changing place was Vienna. I went there as part of a semester-long exchange program when I was 20 and fell head-over-heels in love. I ended up going back for a year as a Fulbright scholar (studying music history there), then back again for another 6 months a couple years later, and making Viennese opera and politics my academic specialty…and then the basis of my first couple of novels for adults, too. I still have dreams where I’m back there. It definitely changed my life.

  9. Kimberly Hatten says:

    Charlottesville,Virginia. It was just so beautiful to live in.

  10. France is fun but Hawaii spoke to my soul. I miss it every day.

  11. […] This giveaway on smartbitchestrashybooks.com is over, but the comments it inspired are wonderful snippets of people’s lives. Well worth a read: http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/2015/11/giveaway-grape-escapes-memoirs-and-a-market-basket/ […]

Comments are closed.

By posting a comment, you consent to have your personally identifiable information collected and used in accordance with our privacy policy.

↑ Back to Top