David1917 wrote:MorkTheFiddle wrote:Le roi de fer. Read it twice, just because it's fun. But got bogged down in La reine étranglée. I have the set in hard bound copies. Because of Game of Thrones, this set of books may be worth millions.
How would you rate the difficulty of this series? Basically, I'm feeling the need to "plunge" into reading some real French extensively. Having spoken Spanish for 15 or so years and spent another few poking around at Italian and Portuguese before finally actually studying French, I feel that I should break off the training wheels and get at it. Studying French with Assimil, etc. feels too easy most of the time. I've skimmed the thread and looked up a few of the books listed, and this is the first one that caught my eye, both for its plot and its being a 7-part series I can hope to read in full. Considering the GoT comparison, I assume it is widely palatable for mass consumption.
Basically I don't want to read Harry Potter, but might need to read something at that level or a bit beyond, along the lines of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" or "50 Shades." Any tips appreciated.
Having been working through this series off an on again, I do really recommend it as a resource. However, I will warn you that it gets a bit tiresome. I tend to need a few months off between books. (And the homophobia got increasingly irritating).
In terms of difficulty, I find it very hard to tell. When I started, I found that I would be fine for a few paragraphs and then have a couple of sentences where I didn't know most of the words. It partly depends on your interests - I'm mostly a 20th century history kind of girl and I have essentially no religious knowledge, so I really struggled at times. Then on the next page when it was political intrigue, I'd be fine for a few pages. But like you say, because it's a series, it built up over the books (two to go). In terms of context, I had studied French throughout school and read several other books first. That doesn't mean you need to, just that I can't comment on how accessible it is for someone else!