French books (livre)

Yesterday, I finally received a French book that I ordered on abebooks: Le Tour du Monde en Quatre-vingts Jours. I can't wait to start reading it in the language it was created in.

Anybody else reading French language books?

You might have more luck if you wrote in French.

>1 robertbruceferguson: Are you just getting started with reading in French? If so, good luck! I don’t know if Jules Verne is the easiest place to start, but you’ve got to leap in somewhere.

I think I started with Simenon, but that was a long time ago. I’ve not been reading very much in French lately, but it usually seems to account for about 10-15% of the books I read in a year — quite a bit of 19th century fiction, but also some contemporary stuff.

Earlier this year I was given a Japanese manga (comic book) translated into French so I read it, but I mostly read in English. I like it when there are words and phrases included from other languages as appropriate though.

>2 MarthaJeanne: oui, merci.

>3 thorold: I've been studying French inconsistently for the past 30 something years. But, I'm not fluent at all. I will look into Simenon, though. I live near New Orleans and read, mostly in English, history concerning the French colonials and their Native American neighbors. I want to get better with translating early French docs.

>4 spiralsheep: I lived on Okinawa for a year, military duty. I learned some hiragana & katagana while there. The Duolingo app has helped me relearn and hone my skill.

The only book I've read, cover to cover, in French was a translation of Kiss Kiss by Roald Dahl. I'd already read it in English, which helped in following the French! I wish my French was still as good as it was then. I have a copy of The Hobbit in French and I keep meaning to tackle that one day.

Reading a book in another language is great fun! I share my reads between French and English books, and occasionally German books if I carefully pick my author. I haven't read any Jules Verne since I was a teen-ager, and I can't remember if his style is difficult. May I suggest other authors? Georges Simenon, listed above, provides rather simple and entertaining reads. For instance, Les Demoiselles de Concarneau is a very slow-pace short novel which describes the atmosphere of a small town in Britanny between the two world wars. Marcel Pagnol and his autobiographical trilogy beginning with La Gloire de mon père is a must for anybody trying to read in French and interested in rural life in Provence at the beginning of the 20th c.

>9 Pepys: I haven't read much Verne — I don't think his style is especially difficult, but it is 19th century. Probably not too challenging (except in sheer length) if you learnt French ages ago from schoolbooks, which are always out of date and angled towards literature students anyway, but tough if your experience is more with spoken, present-day French. In that case, there are plenty of lively young writers to choose from.