A French Book Reading Resource

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Carmody
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Re: A French Book Reading Resource

Postby Carmody » Sat Jul 03, 2021 8:41 pm

People looking for ideas on what contemporary fiction to read next might find this site extremely useful.

Award-winning French Novels
https://frenchculture.org/books-and-ideas/4443-award-winning-french-novels
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Carmody
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Re: A French Book Reading Resource

Postby Carmody » Sun Jul 04, 2021 1:35 am

I have talked before about Vichy and why it is so important today. This video says it far more eloquently than I can:

"How France collaborated with the Nazis and why that still matters" with historian James McAuley
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N88nsz8FKvc
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Carmody
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Re: A French Book Reading Resource

Postby Carmody » Mon Jul 12, 2021 1:32 am



Since I often don't seem to be able to agree with the crowd when it comes to the greats of French literature (ie, Proust, etc.) I thought I might go a step further and speak glowingly about an author that I just reread after a couple years away: L'Amant by Marguerite Duras. She is an author who is widely scorned and dismissed in her own country.

The movie based on this book was nice and having maybe 30% similarity to the book, but the book itself has passages of real poetry in prose. I find the rhythms, insights, and poignancy of this book to be both beautiful and powerful.

Rereading the book also helps to refreshe the vocabulary.
Last edited by Carmody on Tue Jul 13, 2021 7:28 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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MorkTheFiddle
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Re: A French Book Reading Resource

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Mon Jul 12, 2021 4:43 pm

Carmody wrote:
Since I often don't seem to be able to agree with the crowd when it comes to the greats of French literature (ie, Proust, etc.) I thought I might go a step further and speak glowingly about an author that I just reread after a couple years away: L'Amant by Marguerite Duras. She is an author who is widely scorned and dismissed in her own country.

The movie based on this book was nice and having maybe 30% similarity to the book, but the book itself has passages of real poetry in prose. I find the rhythms, insights, and poignancy of this book to be both beautiful and powerful.

Rereading the book also helps to refreshe the vocabulary.
Quite agreed. Durant tells fascinating and complex tales in a simple way.
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Many things which are false are transmitted from book to book, and gain credit in the world. -- attributed to Samuel Johnson

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Carmody
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Re: A French Book Reading Resource

Postby Carmody » Tue Jul 13, 2021 1:45 am

Rick could you advise me where my ScaleImg code is wrong; thank you.
I am trying to do what you suggested.


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Re: A French Book Reading Resource

Postby rdearman » Tue Jul 13, 2021 2:58 am

Carmody wrote:Rick could you advise me where my ScaleImg code is wrong; thank you.
I am trying to do what you suggested.



I edited your post. The problem was whitespace (returns) you need to have the whole thing on one long line. In the example code I had put line breaks to highlight the tags, but just make it one long line, not spaces, tabs, carriage returns.
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Carmody
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Re: A French Book Reading Resource

Postby Carmody » Tue Jul 13, 2021 1:35 pm

Rick
Thanks for taking the time to explain.
Greatly appreciated.
Will proceed to use it in the future.
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Re: A French Book Reading Resource

Postby kanewai » Tue Jul 13, 2021 10:08 pm

I just finished reading Jean Anouilh's Antigone, and really enjoyed it. I had picked up a pile of old plays at a book sale years ago, and they have been sitting on my shelf every since. I was inspired to finally read it after reading an English translation of Sophocle's Antigone. In the introduction the editor mentioned that Jean Anouilh had staged a version in Nazi-occupied Paris, and used it to send a coded message to rally the Resistance.

As soon as I read that I ran to my bookshelf, found my copy, and buried myself in the text the rest of the weekend. I love this kind of stuff.

Here's an excerpt from an article in the LA Times, The Agony of 'Antigone':

Jean Anouilh wrote his “Antigone” in 1944, during the height of the Nazi occupation of France. His interpretation of Sophocles’ Greek tragedy soon became a symbol for the underground -- freedom fighters saw the heroine’s defiance as a rebel-yell to patriotism.

Ironically, many Nazis also embraced “Antigone,” primarily because of the classical source. While German censors suppressed any new works that even hinted of anti-Fascism, “Antigone” slipped by as a relatively safe retelling of an ancient tale.

Anouilh, and his audience, were obviously shrewder than their keepers. “Antigone” is now seen as one of the more enduring metaphors for the Nazis and the collaborationist Vichy regime.


And here's the chorus's opening monologue, in French with English subtitles:

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Re: A French Book Reading Resource

Postby guyome » Wed Jul 14, 2021 8:25 pm

Antigone is great. I remember reading it many years ago and being amazed by the sentence "J’ai cru au jour la première, aujourd'hui." I couldn't say why exactly but it really struck a chord with me. I'm not one for quotes or remembering the exact phrasing of what I read but this is one of the few sentences that made me go "Wow, so that's what you can do with words" (others being Proust's "correcte fantaisie du jardinier" and Virgil's "ibant obscuri sola sub nocte".
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Carmody
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Re: A French Book Reading Resource

Postby Carmody » Sat Jul 24, 2021 2:16 am

I would be most grateful to hear any suggestions people might have for a single volume biography in French on
...Napoleon.

Thank you.
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