Lawyer&Mom, Less is More (French & German)

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jeffers
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Learning: The above, plus French (A2-B1), German (A1), Ancient Greek (?), Sanskrit (beginner)
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Re: Lawyer&Mom, Less is More (French & German)

Postby jeffers » Thu Jun 24, 2021 1:48 pm

Lawyer&Mom wrote:I’ve started my second Gilles Legardinier novel. The first was the second book I ever read in French, and I didn’t realize then how much enjoy him. Reading at all was still such a slog then.

Now liking Gilles Legardinier is not exactly an offbeat choice. He’s the third best selling author in France. He’s translated into 20 languages. I just think he’s ideal for the language learner. His language is straightforward without being simple. His plots move steadily along, something happens in each chapter, and the chapters are short, only four or five pages each in my current book. And he’s funny. Not laugh out loud funny, but I have snorted appreciatively a few times. I’ve never tried Guillaume Musso, and Marc Levy probably deserves another chance, but of the big names in popular French fiction I like Gilles Legardinier.


Based on your recommendation of Gilles Legardinier, I've decided to give one of his books a try. I've bought Une chance sur un milliard, but I'm curious which one you've read and which one you're reading. Looking for new ideas and inspiration is one of the reasons I look at others' logs!
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Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien (roughly, the perfect is the enemy of the good)

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Lawyer&Mom
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Re: Lawyer&Mom, Less is More (French & German)

Postby Lawyer&Mom » Thu Jun 24, 2021 3:06 pm

I’ve read “Ça peut pas rater !” and I’m currently reading “Complètement cramé !.” The first was about a woman rebuilding her life after her boyfriend cheats on her and related hijinks with an assorted cast of coworkers at her office. The second is about a British businessman who starts a new life as a butler in France, and the assorted cast of characters at the manor house. This is a case of a reasonably good writer, not particularly good books. It doesn’t much matter which ones. When I was ordering a third I just went for the cheapest available used.
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Grammaire progressive du français -
niveau debutant
: 60 / 60

Grammaire progressive du francais -
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Pimsleur French 1-5
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Lawyer&Mom
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Re: Lawyer&Mom, Less is More (French & German)

Postby Lawyer&Mom » Fri Jul 30, 2021 5:20 am

So I made it to chapter 18 of the natural method textbook. It’s still great for my purposes, and has a lot of review, but I felt I needed to slow down and really drill some of the material into my head. Where can I find copious grammar drills? FSI, of course! Now I’m doing it a bit differently. I’m not doing the oral drills. I’m sure they would be useful, but I find it fussy and distracting to deal with the audio. And I’m not a beginner, I’ve listened to hundreds of hours of French TV, I have a decent internalized accent. Not perfect, but I’m not going to mangle anything too terribly. So I’m writing out the FSI drills. I’m a very visual learner, and writing really helps get things under my skin. Sometimes I’m just copying the sentences, sometimes I cover half of the sentence and make myself guess the obscured part. Sometimes the drills provide actual questions to answer. It’s slow, but good.
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Grammaire progressive du français -
niveau debutant
: 60 / 60

Grammaire progressive du francais -
intermédiaire
: 25 / 52

Pimsleur French 1-5
: 3 / 5

Lawyer&Mom
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Re: Lawyer&Mom, Less is More (French & German)

Postby Lawyer&Mom » Wed Aug 11, 2021 2:56 am

I was watching Call my Agent at the beginning of the summer, and was just loving it. I could understand just enough to follow the story, and the story was so much fun that it didn’t matter how much I was missing. And then I hit a wall of feelings and had to stop. Chic Parisians being fabulous reminded me a bit too much of my own fabulous Frenchies from grad school in London, and our various trips to Paris. (Frenchies was their name in English for each other. I would never presume.) It was a very tumultuous period in my life. (Is 23 easy for anyone?). I started feeling really homesick for Europe, and Europe, especially in the pandemic, was feeling really far away. So I just stopped watching. Switched to various dubbed shows. Call my Agent isn’t going anywhere. I can go back someday. (And maybe back to Paris someday???)
15 x
Grammaire progressive du français -
niveau debutant
: 60 / 60

Grammaire progressive du francais -
intermédiaire
: 25 / 52

Pimsleur French 1-5
: 3 / 5

Lawyer&Mom
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Re: Lawyer&Mom, Less is More (French & German)

Postby Lawyer&Mom » Tue Sep 21, 2021 4:05 am

I really fell down the rabbit hole of native French TV since my last post. 125 hours, maybe? I don’t know what it’s done to my French exactly, but I’ve reached the coveted “It’s a Small World After All” stage of native media consumption. I’m watching a movie right now, La vie scolaire, and the lead actress is from Plan Coeur, and the supporting actor from Lupin. I just finished eight seasons of Candice Renoir, and there were two guest actresses from Dix pour cent and two guest actors from Le bureau des legends…. (Candice Renoir has a murder of the week format like Law and Order, so I imagine a French viewer would recognize a lot of the many, many guest stars.)

I highly recommend Candice Renoir by the way, despite the absurd number of murders, it is light and frothy and filmed on location in the south of France. Its star, Cecile Bois, is radiantly beautiful and charming, and endlessly fun to watch. I would absolutely not watch it in English, and I would be the lesser for it.
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Grammaire progressive du français -
niveau debutant
: 60 / 60

Grammaire progressive du francais -
intermédiaire
: 25 / 52

Pimsleur French 1-5
: 3 / 5

jackb
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Re: Lawyer&Mom, Less is More (French & German)

Postby jackb » Tue Sep 21, 2021 11:23 am

I highly recommend Candice Renoir by the way, despite the absurd number of murders, it is light and frothy and filmed on location in the south of France. Its star, Cecile Bois, is radiantly beautiful and charming, and endlessly fun to watch. I would absolutely not watch it in English, and I would be the lesser for it.


I just discovered Candice Renoir and I totally agree. I found the first two on AcornTV, but with the plastered English subtitles. I'd love to watch it without them. How are you watching all 8 seasons?

For some reason, I seem to be able to watch shows French that I would never tolerate in English (I'm looking at you Gilmore Girls).
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Lawyer&Mom
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Re: Lawyer&Mom, Less is More (French & German)

Postby Lawyer&Mom » Tue Sep 21, 2021 2:27 pm

jackb wrote:
I highly recommend Candice Renoir by the way, despite the absurd number of murders, it is light and frothy and filmed on location in the south of France. Its star, Cecile Bois, is radiantly beautiful and charming, and endlessly fun to watch. I would absolutely not watch it in English, and I would be the lesser for it.


I just discovered Candice Renoir and I totally agree. I found the first two on AcornTV, but with the plastered English subtitles. I'd love to watch it without them. How are you watching all 8 seasons?

For some reason, I seem to be able to watch shows French that I would never tolerate in English (I'm looking at you Gilmore Girls).


I watched the first two seasons on Acorn, and purchased the remainder on DVD from Amazon.fr. Worth the price of admission, I find the episodes to be fairly rewatchable. The later seasons have a lot of romantical drama, not always entirely believable, but very engaging.

I’ve tried and failed to watch Gilmore Girls in English. I’m kinda over dubbed TV, but winter is coming…
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Lawyer&Mom
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Re: Lawyer&Mom, Less is More (French & German)

Postby Lawyer&Mom » Wed Sep 22, 2021 5:43 am

A special treat for fans of Candice Renoir and Alpine scenery: an episode of Nos terres inconnu with Cecile Bois and Raphael Lenglet in the Queyras region of France.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NCkSOp7iwYE

This was a delight for me because I had wondered how Cecile and Raphael get along in real life. I didn’t expect them to be in love, they are *actors* after all, but they have such a natural chemistry on the show, I was hoping they were at least friendly off-screen. And they are! Long-term coworkers who are fond of each other is a lovely thing.
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Lawyer&Mom
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Re: Lawyer&Mom, Less is More (French & German)

Postby Lawyer&Mom » Tue Sep 28, 2021 5:50 pm

Working my way through random French movies on Netflix. Watched “Blind Date.” Neighbors start a relationship, sight unseen, by having conversations through their shared wall. Not terribly realistic, but the leads have great chemistry and the spoken French is very clear. Spotted Stefan Godin from The Bureau, Phillipe Duquesne from Candice Renoir, and Oscar Copp from The Bureau *and* Candice Renoir! (Clearly there are only 300 people in France, and they have to recycle.) In the middle of The Climb, a comedy about a black youth from the banlieue who decides to climb Mount Everest to impress a girl. Who shows up? Oscar Copp, of course.
5 x
Grammaire progressive du français -
niveau debutant
: 60 / 60

Grammaire progressive du francais -
intermédiaire
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Pimsleur French 1-5
: 3 / 5

DaveAgain
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Re: Lawyer&Mom, Less is More (French & German)

Postby DaveAgain » Tue Sep 28, 2021 9:30 pm

Lawyer&Mom wrote:Working my way through random French movies on Netflix. Watched “Blind Date.” Neighbors start a relationship, sight unseen, by having conversations through their shared wall. Not terribly realistic, but the leads have great chemistry and the spoken French is very clear. Spotted Stefan Godin from The Bureau, Phillipe Duquesne from Candice Renoir, and Oscar Copp from The Bureau *and* Candice Renoir! (Clearly there are only 300 people in France, and they have to recycle.) In the middle of The Climb, a comedy about a black youth from the banlieue who decides to climb Mount Everest to impress a girl. Who shows up? Oscar Copp, of course.
I've been watching Candice Renoir since you mentioned it the other day. The programme's wikipedia page mentioned winning a TV prize "Festival_Polar_de_Cognac: meilleure série francophone de télévision", other winners are: Boulevard du Palais, Section de Recherches, Cherif, Capitaine Marleau.
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