Register  Login  Active Topics  Maps  

Weekly free French BDs from Izneo

 Language Learning Forum : Books, Literature & Reading Post Reply


emk
Diglot
Moderator
United States
Joined 5530 days ago

2615 posts - 8806 votes 
Speaks: English*, FrenchB2
Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 1 of 7
23 November 2014 at 3:44pm | IP Logged 
BDs, or bandes dessinées, are French graphic novels. Traditionally, they're published as hardcover volumes with about 48 pages per volume. This is a huge market in France, with something for almost every taste, including fantasy, police thrillers, science fiction, humor, children's stories, social commentary, autobiographies, histories of major wars, and so on.

Izneo is a joint project by several French publishing houses which provides inexpensive and legal online access to thousands of BDs. And unlike most digital media in French, I've never had any problem accessing it from the United States. I think geoffw was the first HTLALer to recommend Izneo, for which I am massively grateful.

Izneo also had a a unlimited subscription plan for 9.90€/month which provides access to a library of about 1,500 BDs at a time. And every week or so, Izneo releases one BD for free. To find out about it, you need to create an account and subscribe to their newsletter. Yes, they'll spam you a couple of times per week with awesome things to read in French. Is this really a problem?

I intend to use this thread for posting the weekly free BD from Izneo, assuming I have time. But please feel free to post it yourself if you wish. :-)

This week's free BD



Complainte des landes perdues - cycle 1 tome 1

Quote:
Rosinski, dessinateur de Thorgal, et Dufaux, l'un des meilleurs scénaristes actuels, nous font découvrir l'univers de Sioban, princesse sans royaume mais animée d'une extraordinaire soif de vengeance et de reconquête ! Complainte des landes perdues possède la force des récits fantastiques et la magie des légendes celtiques. En quatre albums, cette série fait déjà partie des indispensables.

Rosinksi, illustrator of Thorgal and Dufaux, one of the best current scenarists, introduces us to the universe of Sioban, a princess without a kingdom, but animated by an extraordinary thirst for vengeance and reconquest! Complainte des landes perdues possess the force of fantastic stories and the magic of Celtic legends. In four volumes, this series is already one of the indispensables.

This one looks like reasonable intermediate reading, with a bit of specialized vocabulary. There are 6 more volumes available in this series for 1.99€ each, and the 8th is available for 9.99€. You can read the first five pages of any volume for free without creating an account. And US credit cards will work fine.

Typically, most French BDs average around 150 words per page. Mass-market US paperbacks average around 250 to 350 words per page. So for Super Challenge purposes, you can could count every 5 pages of a BD as 2 or 3 pages of an ordinary book (unless there's been a rule change, but that's what I did last time). This means that the 8-volume series mentioned above probably offers at least 160 pages towards the Super Challenge for under 22€, and it's all illustrated.

Almost every week, Izneo will announce a new deal like this: The first volume in a series will be free, and the rest will be available at a sharp discount. Obviously I'm a fan of this deal, and I recommend it highly to students of French. :-)

Edited by emk on 23 November 2014 at 11:07pm

8 persons have voted this message useful





emk
Diglot
Moderator
United States
Joined 5530 days ago

2615 posts - 8806 votes 
Speaks: English*, FrenchB2
Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 2 of 7
07 December 2014 at 2:26pm | IP Logged 
If you want lots of free reading material, watch the front page of Izneo this month! From now until Christmas, they're offering a new free BD every day.

Here's the BD for today.
7 persons have voted this message useful



Darklight1216
Diglot
Senior Member
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5098 days ago

411 posts - 639 votes 
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: German

 
 Message 3 of 7
07 December 2014 at 9:17pm | IP Logged 
emk wrote:
If you want lots of free reading material, watch the front page of Izneo
this month! From now until Christmas, they're offering a new free BD every day.

Here's the BD for
today
.

Thanks for the heads up. I missed out on that last year, I think.


1 person has voted this message useful



redflag
Senior Member
Australia
Joined 3840 days ago

123 posts - 182 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Danish, Indonesian, French

 
 Message 4 of 7
08 December 2014 at 8:05am | IP Logged 
Thanks emk. I definitely will be going back each day.
1 person has voted this message useful



geoffw
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4686 days ago

1134 posts - 1865 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish
Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian

 
 Message 5 of 7
08 December 2014 at 1:03pm | IP Logged 
Huh. They don't mention anything about free BDs in the newsletters I've been getting, from what I can remember. I
had been aware that they have a free section, though.

And when I checked right now, the first issue of Blake and Mortimer was free!
1 person has voted this message useful



Mohave
Senior Member
United States
justpaste.it/Mohave1
Joined 4005 days ago

291 posts - 444 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: French

 
 Message 6 of 7
08 December 2014 at 10:30pm | IP Logged 
geoffw wrote:
Huh. They don't mention anything about free BDs in the newsletters I've been getting, from
what I can remember. I
had been aware that they have a free section, though.

And when I checked right now, the first issue of Blake and Mortimer was free!


gepffw Great find! Thanks so much for posting about Blake et Mortimer T1!! I didn't see that one for free
earlier.


1 person has voted this message useful



kanewai
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
justpaste.it/kanewai
Joined 4887 days ago

1386 posts - 3054 votes 
Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese
Studies: Italian, Spanish

 
 Message 7 of 7
09 December 2014 at 10:27am | IP Logged 
emk wrote:
If you want lots of free reading material, watch the front page of Izneo this month! From now
until Christmas, they're offering a new free BD every day.


Don't do it! It's a vicious trap! I downloaded La Balade de Yaya, read all 97 pages of T1 in a single night, and
all it was was a gateway drug that will leave you wanting more. At €5.99 a dose.

I'm bummed I missed Dofus Monster. My download stalled, and it was too late when I noticed - it was a new
day and a new b.d.   But Yaya is pretty cool - it's a story of a street kid and a rich runaway lost in the streets
of Shanghai in 1937, right as war erupts. The graphics are cool, and the language very easy to follow.

Largo Winch, Millenium (based on the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), and Blake & Mortimer are also free. Not
sure which ones are the daily specials, and which will be around for awhile.

I have the Izneo app, but this is the first time I've really used it. It sucked on my 1st Gen iPad, but now I have
a shiny almost-new mini, and it's great for reading graphic novels. Thanks for the heads-up!

Note: Yaya averages only ten to fifteen words per page, so it won't get you far in the Super Challenge.



Edited by kanewai on 09 December 2014 at 10:32am



1 person has voted this message useful



If you wish to post a reply to this topic you must first login. If you are not already registered you must first register


Post ReplyPost New Topic Printable version Printable version

You cannot post new topics in this forum - You cannot reply to topics in this forum - You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum - You cannot create polls in this forum - You cannot vote in polls in this forum


This page was generated in 0.3896 seconds.


DHTML Menu By Milonic JavaScript
Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved
No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization.