Alysa Salzberg's blog

  La Joute des mariniers  by Nicolas Raguenet   ( image source )   Researching the past isn’t easy - and I’m learning that certain time periods are even more difficult to visualize and understand than I might have expected.   What I hope will be my next novel is taking me to a different time in Paris’s history, and I’m trying to get down to the depths of it, to be able to see and hear and smell it (even though it apparently smelled pretty gross) -- as much as someone who didn’t actually live then, can. One thing I can be sure of: The traditional shape of a brioche hasn’t changed in centuries, as this 18 th  century painting by Chardin attests!   Detail from   La Brioche by Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin   ( image source )   This need to do some serious time traveling to a different era means that I’ll be taking a break for a few months from posting on this blog.   I will always be fascinated by the Siege of Paris, and I continue to read firsthand accounts for fun. For instance, my most