A book on French mayflies

After having reviewed the book "Alfred Ronalds’ The Fly-fisher’s Entomology", the author Paul Troël sent me a mail inquiring whether I’d like to see his French book on mayflies.
For people who know me or have followed this site for a while, the reply was pretty obvious.
Who am I to turn down the offer of a book?
That’s probably not going to happen any time soon!

The book cover

Paul Troël

Even though the book is in French and my high school French is pretty rusty – to put it mildly – I know from earlier experiences with Spanish and Italian books that I can get great joy from them, even if I can’t read and understand every word. And my French is definitely better than both my Spanish and my Italian, of which I only understand a word here and there.

So Paul was kind enough to send me a copy of his and Jacques Le Doaré’s book on French mayflies.

And not surprisingly it’s a beautiful book!

My experience with his book on Alfred Ronald’s book was that Paul’s illustrations are really excellent, and this French book is littered with them. It’s a feast for the eye, and basically every spread is adorned with one or several beautiful images of insects, fish and flies. A few photos have also found their way into the book as well as some reproductions of older illustrations from other sources.

As I said my French is limited, and I’m not going to read this cover to cover, but I still enjoy leafing through it savoring the images and spelling my way though as much of the text as I fathom.

If your French is better than mine – and/or you are just interested in a really excellent book on French mayflies – this book can be yours.
It’s not cheap, though. Books are expensive to produce and ship these days, and this one is 60 Euros and between 16 and 27 Euros to get mailed depending on your location. So definitely a cost. But 288 high quality pages simply cost a lot of money to produce.
More here: Les Merveilleux Ephémères des rivières de France et d'ailleurs (mostly in French).