A French Book Reading Resource

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Carmody
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Re: A French Book Reading Resource

Postby Carmody » Fri Nov 26, 2021 5:18 pm

At the risk of behaving in a totally unorthodox manner here, I want to share not a book but a video. It is submitted as an encouragement to others like myself who are B1/B2 readers and are still struggling with the Oral side of things. What follows is a video from Patricia of Home Language blog. https://www.youtube.com/c/HomeLanguage/videos

At this time I am aware that I understand, for the most part, women speaking French better than men. I think it has to do with them being less guttural or not swallowing their pronunciation. In any case I definitely understand Patricia here and am very definitely interested in her choice of topics: the French Foreign Legion.

I have tried to insert it using our icon but it doesn't seem to work so here is the URL:


Enjoy.

(i bet a large amount of money that Rick will sign in on this thread and insert the video with no problem, but then again Rick is a true pro on all things computer.)
Admin Edit: It was because you had also included the time at 126 seconds. You just need the video reference number: vEdBB1ZVjJs between the youtube tags. If you edit this message, then you'll see how I did it. :)
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Jean-Luc
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Re: A French Book Reading Resource

Postby Jean-Luc » Fri Nov 26, 2021 5:44 pm

This website is selling books to the US. Try to order an item and on the page of the shopping card, scroll the list of prices for delivery. This is a group of 2500 French bookshops. In France, you order and you can get your book free of charge in your nearest bookshop.

https://www.lalibrairie.com


About parcels from France to the USA: with UPS https://www.ups.com/fr/en/smallbusiness ... ?loc=en_FR
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Carmody
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Re: A French Book Reading Resource

Postby Carmody » Sat Nov 27, 2021 3:06 am

Jean-Luc
Thank you very much!
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Carmody
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Re: A French Book Reading Resource

Postby Carmody » Sat Nov 27, 2021 2:57 pm

Some more news on booksellers in France
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Carmody
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Re: A French Book Reading Resource

Postby Carmody » Mon Nov 29, 2021 3:42 pm

I have been reading La France du temps présent (1945-2005):French Edition by Michelle Zancarini-Fournel for the past week. It is over 600 pages and I am not sure how far I will get but I can say for sure that I do not recommend it to anyone.

The font size is very small; like size 8 or smaller and the color of the type or text is not as black as it should be. Since it was printed in Spain it was possibly cheaper for the publisher but the end product for the reader is really poor.

Will let you know more about the book itself after I have spent more time reading it.
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Re: A French Book Reading Resource

Postby kanewai » Tue Nov 30, 2021 4:19 am

Here's a couple for you all, including one very popular book that I didn't like - but enough people do that it's worth a mention here.

Tahar ben Jalloun, Cette aveuglante absence de lumière. 2002

This is based on the memoirs of a man who survived 18 years in a cramped lightless cell in an underground Moroccan prison that, officially, didn’t exist. I went into the book cautiously; I was worried that it would either be an endless litany of horrors, or an American-style hope-against-odds novel. It was neither. The novel focused less on the horrors of the prison, and more on the man’s spiritual journey. There’s a lot of Islamic mysticism, but also a fair amount of Western references - the men share stories to survive, including retellings of Camus’ L’étranger and Buñuel’s Exterminating Angel.

I've never read anything like it. I recommend it for anyone who likes philosophical novels.


Ágota Kristóf, Le grand cahier. 1986

This was mentioned before; I can't remember if I dropped a review or not. A woman drops off her twin boys at her estranged mother's house in an unnamed country during an unnamed war. The boys decide to keep a journal, the grand cahier, in which they eliminate all emotion, and only recount the facts of what they saw and did. Things get dark and twisted fast, but the boys' dispassionate reporting means that the book feels light rather than heavy.

Also recommended.


Laurent Binet, Civilizations. 2019

The novel is based on a great idea - what if the Vikings had travelled all the way to the Caribbean, and introduced horses, steel, and Western diseases to the indigenous people before Columbus "discovered" the new world? Instead of dying out or being enslaved, the Taíno would have been able to resist the Spanish. And what if, instead of being conquered, the Incan Empire were the ones who conquered Iberia?

Five stars for a great idea. Binet failed in the execution - the characters are all too one-dimensional, and the events become increasingly far-fetched. I was intrigued at first, but more and more frustrated as it went on, and didn't finish. It won some big awards, though, so I'm in the minority in thinking this was an ambitious fail.


In process: Hervé Le Tellier, L'anomalie. 2020 (I learned about this one here!)

I'm a quarter of the way in. So far I like the writing style - it feels like a very modern French, and I have to read slowly. I'm glad it's on kindle so I can look up new words; there are a lot of them for me. It reminds me a bit of Italo Calvino's Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore in that each chapter introduces a new character and plot line, with only hints of what might connect them. I'm cautiously optimistic - it's all going to depend on if the author can draw all the plot lines together, or if he'll end on some lazily ambiguous post-modern note. Le Tellier is a member of the Oulipo group, which worries me. I hope he nails the landing.
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Super Challenge - 50 books
Italian: 11 / 50
Spanish: 50 / 50
French: 16 / 50

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Carmody
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Re: A French Book Reading Resource

Postby Carmody » Sat Dec 04, 2021 3:26 am

kanewai,
thanks so much for sharing the journey.
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Carmody
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Re: A French Book Reading Resource

Postby Carmody » Sat Dec 04, 2021 3:41 am

Image


La France Du Temps Present is one volume of the Belin publishers series of French history-13 volumes in all. This review covers only this volume. This book comes in two different versions: the hard back version and the trade paperback compact version of 656 pages which I bought and which is half the price of the hard back version.

I have mentioned previously the physical challenges of reading a text which is in very small font and not entirely black. To that I would add that the authors have inserted numerous pages of full color pictures (4 in all) of modern day highways towards the end of the book that don’t have that much relevance to the text. Many of the graphs in the book are also of somewhat questionable relevance to the text. And finally on this physical aspect of the book, is the publisher’s tendency to print some of the text on some of the pages so near to the inner crease of the book that it is a real challenge to physically be able to read the text. Possibly the fact that the book was published in Spain influenced the quality of the end product.

Moving on to the writing of the book. I am a lover of history and have read it from high school on through out my life, however, this book and its discussion of the period of 1945-2005 just does not grab my interest. Possibly it is because the two authors-Michelle Zancarini-Fournel and Christian Delacroix- have not written that much before but I checked their bios and they already have many books to their credit.

Henry Rousso who wrote the preface of this book is a French historian that I have found very interesting, and I have read two of his books on Vichy and related topics. But the authors-Michelle Zancarini-Fournel and Christian Delacroix- lack a literary/narrative skill that Fernand Braudel (de l'École des Annales) and Henry Rousso have. Writing history is more than just listing names, people, places, dates, incidents, etc. Michelle Zancarini-Fournel and Christian Delacroix lack the literary skills to help the story come alive.

Finally, I must add that all the French books that I read are books that I truly want to enjoy and share with people. I am really disappointed each time I write a book review and cannot recommend it for others. The aim for me is to read books in French that I can keep and go back to read on other occasions and so learn the language better. So for me it is sad to say that I would give this book a rating of:
3/10

N.B.:
The mail man has today just delivered another history book: Le siècle des bouleversements (de 1914 à nos jours) de Jean-François Sirinelli. I see with relief at least the font size is normal this time around. Stay tuned for the review of that one; I am definitely hopeful.
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Carmody
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Re: A French Book Reading Resource

Postby Carmody » Thu Dec 09, 2021 4:08 am

This could be useful to people who are looking for good ideas of books to read:



If you read any of them please let me know.
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Carmody
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Re: A French Book Reading Resource

Postby Carmody » Thu Dec 09, 2021 9:49 pm

I read France24 regularly online and as a history lover just could not resist sharing this quote of Macron:

https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20211209-macron-visits-french-town-vichy-as-world-war-ii-polemic-enters-presidential-race

"Aides to Macron insisted that his trip(to Vichy) was not intended as a response to Zemmour, but the president said in an interview on Wednesday that “Vichy takes us back to history. This history was lived and has been written by historians. Let us not manipulate it, shake it up or revise it.”

I love it.

I know we are not allowed to discuss politics, etc. here, but I would love it if anyone wants to PM and discuss with me:
“Vichy takes us back to history. This history was lived and has been written by historians. Let us not manipulate it, shake it up or revise it.”
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