French books are rubbish?

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French books are rubbish?

Postby rdearman » Sun Oct 10, 2021 2:57 pm

Recently I wrote in my log.

Once again I find myself wondering if there has ever been an interesting novel written by a French author, because I have yet to find one. So far every book from my shelf which I have read in French and enjoyed has been a translation from English or Spanish.

Carmody thought this might be an interesting topic for discussion. But to give you a little background if you haven't read my log, I had 22 books in French on my bookshelf which I had been gifted. I decided to read all of them even if they are not really something that I would pick. Many of these are "works of literature", which really isn't my cup of tea.

So while I am still plowing through all the dross I have on my bookshelf in French, do you have any recommendations for French books that don't suck?
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Re: French books are rubbish?

Postby RyanSmallwood » Sun Oct 10, 2021 3:19 pm

Not sure if you have a list anywhere of the stuff you've tried already, but have you gotten around to Le Comte de Monte Cristo yet? Its maybe a bit longer than it needs to be in parts, but overall I found it hooked me in pretty early and I was always eager to keep going through.

Though I'm not too much of an expert on French literature yet, so maybe others have better suggestions.
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Re: French books are rubbish?

Postby Le Baron » Sun Oct 10, 2021 3:39 pm

I find this an interesting question considering I just said I favoured French books in general for the opposite reasons! :lol:

I don't think you are likely to find anything much outside that (pretty accurate) description of how French literature just is. There are many more types of 'feel-good' books now, but even these can have elements of social-realism. So it's usually translations all the way if someone is looking for a different type of content. The French just have a literature that reflects French characteristics/values.

One alternative: Canadian French literature. While the language is essentially the same, the social values in Quebec are more more similar to British values (some will disagree with me, but I'm saying what I see). Thus they publish a broader variety of writing. Also true for Francophone Africa.
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Re: French books are rubbish?

Postby rdearman » Sun Oct 10, 2021 3:47 pm

For me any of the 19th century books are a pain. Long drawn out description and run on sentences. I want to move on to something modern, but the one book I have read which was modern was shite (not to put too fine a point on it) and the other was a SciFi book from the sixties.

But I am not a fan of navel gazing novels. Here is a review of the modern French novel i read:

https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 90#p192035

@lebaron. You'll probably love that book then!
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Re: French books are rubbish?

Postby cito » Sun Oct 10, 2021 4:00 pm

I've found Camus to be very digestible. I like that his writing is very sparse and not too wordy, too many authors use words they don't need to, and honestly, I've found his works to be quite enjoyable and clear.

Maybe not Le Mythe de Sisyphe though, I found that hard even in my native language. Then again I tried reading it when I was 16 or so, so maybe I would have more success now.
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Re: French books are rubbish?

Postby Le Baron » Sun Oct 10, 2021 4:25 pm

rdearman wrote:For me any of the 19th century books are a pain. Long drawn out description and run on sentences. I want to move on to something modern, but the one book I have read which was modern was shite (not to put too fine a point on it) and the other was a SciFi book from the sixties.

But I am not a fan of navel gazing novels. Here is a review of the modern French novel i read:

https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 90#p192035

@lebaron. You'll probably love that book then!

I quite understand the dislike of the 19th century 'purple passage' type books. I also find them excessively hard work. There are certainly some exceptions - just as there are in English 19thC writing, e.g. George Gissing - but mostly they are beyond the patience of most readers, native or not.
BTW have you had a go at Pierre Boulle's La Planète des Singes? Or his Bridge on the River Kwai? These are certainly exceptions to the run-of-the-mill. Perhaps also Henri Pierre-Roche's Jules et Jim?
cito wrote:I've found Camus to be very digestible. I like that his writing is very sparse and not too wordy, too many authors use words they don't need to, and honestly, I've found his works to be quite enjoyable and clear.

Maybe not Le Mythe de Sisyphe though, I found that hard even in my native language. Then again I tried reading it when I was 16 or so, so maybe I would have more success now.

You may be right. I didn't even look at Camus that much until all that recently. His L'Etranger seems to be a mainstay of school/college French, based upon that very notion of his direct writing. I never read it until about 15 years ago. Though from the point of part 2 of that book the writing becomes very vague and pseudo-philosophical and this smudges the clarity of the essentially direct writing. I actually have La Peste lined up in the queue to arrive at some point, so we'll see how that goes.
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Re: French books are rubbish?

Postby Cavesa » Sun Oct 10, 2021 4:33 pm

Yeah, you're paying the price for the clichés "French is such an intellectual and art language" and "you should read/gift quality literature" :-D

rdearman wrote:I generally prefer genre books, scifi, murder, action, thriller, etc. I like those books because the characters do stuff! They kill a dragon, have a car chase, shoot a blaster, investigate a murder, they do something. This book is all about navel-gazing. Any action happens "off-stage" and is generally related back by the POV character. The scifi book was bad because it was just a crazy mixture of words, this book is bad because it sucks.


My kind of reader! :-)

A few tips on original French books, where characters do a LOT of stuff:

Michel Robert: L'Agent des Ombres series. Fantasy, definitely for adults, complex, fun, not a cliché, and people do a lot of stuff.

Laurent Genefort: Les opéras de l'espace: awesome, space opera (who would have guessed, by the name), the main character is an opera singer, who loses his voice and needs to find themselves a new career to finance his space quest.

Maxime Chattame: série Autre-Monde. The world as we know ends (the beginning is a bit Stephen King-ish), only kids are left and they need to do a lot of stuff, fight the new wildlife for survival, defend themselves from the former adults, solve mysteries, build an aircraft,...

Marc Lévy: Sept jours pour une éternité: God and Lucifer have a bet, their servants have a lot to do.

Jean-Christophe Grangé: Les rivières pourpres. You wanted a thriller, murder investigation etc? Here you go.

Charlotte Bousquet: Arachnae. Fantasy but far from utopia. Characters do stuff, solve murders, fight for survival or power and so on.

Pierre Pevel: anything from him.

And for the record: I didn't like l'Étranger. It may be a canon book, it may be objectively good, if some say so, but I hated it.
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Re: French books are rubbish?

Postby cito » Sun Oct 10, 2021 5:17 pm

Cavesa wrote:And for the record: I didn't like l'Étranger. It may be a canon book, it may be objectively good, if some say so, but I hated it.


That's so funny! I really loved it in English, so I decided to read it in French. I'm not close to being done but I'm enjoying it so far by reading it through LingQ. At least you read it before judging it... you're much better than most haha... but hey, to each their own.
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Re: French books are rubbish?

Postby Cavesa » Sun Oct 10, 2021 6:26 pm

cito wrote:
Cavesa wrote:And for the record: I didn't like l'Étranger. It may be a canon book, it may be objectively good, if some say so, but I hated it.


That's so funny! I really loved it in English, so I decided to read it in French. I'm not close to being done but I'm enjoying it so far by reading it through LingQ. At least you read it before judging it... you're much better than most haha... but hey, to each their own.


Not sure why it's funny. People simply have various literary tastes, that's all. Judging books (especially in the sense like/dislike) is nothing wrong, don't judge judging :-) I'm not somewhat bad, just "better than most", we simply disagree on a book.

I also diagree with one statement in the thread,
leBaron wrote:I don't think you are likely to find anything much outside that (pretty accurate) description of how French literature just is. There are many more types of 'feel-good' books now, but even these can have elements of social-realism. So it's usually translations all the way if someone is looking for a different type of content. The French just have a literature that reflects French characteristics/values.
, that's simply an overgeneralization and it has very little to do with reality. Let's not forget we're talking about one of the biggest literary traditions of our civilization, with a huge reader population and also numerous authors. It doesn't do it any justice, to put it all in one bag of stereotypes, and to claim only translations or books from other francophone countries to be more different.

The main problem is not any lack of diversity within this huge library, that's simply nonsense. The problem is a certain lack of diversity in canons, and also lots of stereotypes. If people keep picking a certain kind of books to represent the whole French literature, then we get to a spiral of certain types of readers choosing French, and then further presenting it with the same kind of books.

It has been so for centuries, there have been various genres, even the books from the 19th century are not just one genre, one style. These days, French is one of the very few languages on the planet, that can offer tons of value to any kind of reader. Yes, some will have to search a bit longer, as the usual lists of recommended books won't help them. But you will find, and you don't have to grab a translation.

But truth be told, if I relied only on information from teachers and the usual recommended lists, I would probably agree and find the French literature pretty horrible too :-D
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Re: French books are rubbish?

Postby Le Baron » Sun Oct 10, 2021 7:18 pm

Cavesa wrote:that's simply an overgeneralization and it has very little to do with reality. Let's not forget we're talking about one of the biggest literary traditions of our civilization, with a huge reader population and also numerous authors. It doesn't do it any justice, to put it all in one bag of stereotypes, and to claim only translations or books from other francophone countries to be more different.

The main problem is not any lack of diversity within this huge library, that's simply nonsense. The problem is a certain lack of diversity in canons, and also lots of stereotypes. If people keep picking a certain kind of books to represent the whole French literature, then we get to a spiral of certain types of readers choosing French, and then further presenting it with the same kind of books.

If any of that were true (it isn't) there wouldn't be numerous posts all over this forum decrying the dearth of anything beyond the types of books as described above by rdearman - which is the very point of the thread.

France publishes a lot of diverse books, but to opine that there isn't a particular French approach to literature (of all kinds) would suggest to me only a passing familiarity with French writing.
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