It's a diary, a wish book, a passport, and a fine gift. The French Country Diary personifies the marriage of object and subject. Contrasting Provençal fabric patterns wrap diary and gift sleeve, and new patterns are used as the headnotes to each week-at-a-glance spread. And then there are the photographs-lush full-color still lifes and landscapes, close-ups and candid moments.

Roaming the countryside, author Linda Dannenberg and photographer Guy Bouchet create a portfolio of color, scent, and painterly light-of a 19th-century rose farm near Lyons, a sunny seaside caf, in the Basque country, copper pots gleaming in a farmhouse kitchen.