James29 wrote:I'm feeling bad for setting French aside. It was calling me this week. I did not do anything in French, but I'm starting to think about getting back into it. There must be an easy way to get to a decent conversational/reading level in French.
Hi, I'm a tempter, in the French language division.
(But no, seriously, I know what's it's like to have a single language that matters more than all the others combined, but to be occasionally tempted by another Romance language. I'm not actually trying to talk you into studying French, merely pointing you to some stuff that might provide a bit of fun in French at your level if you happen to look for something. Feel free to retaliate with suggestions in Spanish, of course. )
Did I mention that the first 5 pages of XIII: Le Jour du soleil noir are available online for free? Just click on "Lire l'extrait gratuit" and you can flip through it online. The English edition has the same pages available for use as a parallel text.
The plot will seem curiously familiar:
A man washes ashore near an old couple’s house, barely alive. When he comes to, he has forgotten everything, including his name. The only clues to his identity: a key sewn into his clothes, a bullet wound to the head... and the number XIII tattooed on his shoulder. A meagre start to reconstruct one’s self.
…but the story soon goes in very different directions than either Ludlum's book or the movie.
Another good one which I know I've mentioned before is Largo Winch : L'Heritier, where a young man is suddenly thrust into the leadership of a multinational corporation, and lethal conspiracies abound. There's an English version and a movie trailer.
Or if you were in more of a Spanish-speaking mood, Blacksad is a fun classic gritty noir detective story, written by a Spanish author but published first in French. (Definitely not for small children, though.) The Spanish edition is available used from a bunch of places in the US, but you'd probably have more luck finding a cheap source than I would. Unfortunately, the French and Spanish texts diverge a lot in the details, so you need to be able to be at a level where you can mostly guess the French based on the Spanish.