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| Striver Newbie United States Joined 3384 days ago 8 posts - 15 votes Studies: French | Message 17 of 20 17 September 2015 at 6:22am | IP Logged | ||
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Proust took perseverance to get through in English, so I know I am biting off a lot. No doubt this will be a
several year project. I've already read a bit of L'Étranger. It's surprisingly accessible given the limited time I've been studying French. Must be why it's one of the go to recommendations for new French readers. Still yet, I'm not able to get through some paragraphs without an English translation as a crutch. Much work ahead, but I enjoy the labor so I'm optimistic about at least reaching my French goal. Edited by Striver on 18 September 2015 at 5:08am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| obsculta Newbie United States Joined 5837 days ago 36 posts - 83 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 18 of 20 17 September 2015 at 4:42pm | IP Logged | ||
Two recommendations for after you finish L'Étranger. Philippe Claudel's La petite fille de Monsieur Linh is a lovely short novel in the literary fiction genre about an elderly Vietnamese immigrant to France, his granddaughter, and the unlikely friendship he strikes up with a grieving French widower, despite their language barrier. Its degree of difficulty is similar to L'Étranger. Here's an Amazon link: Monsieur-Livre-French/dp/2253115541/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1 442499817&sr=8- 1&keywords=la+petite+fille+de+monsieur+linh">La petite fille de Monsieur Linh Slightly more difficult, but not much, is Nobel Laureate J.M.G. Le Clezio's Mondo et autres histoires, which is a collection of dream-like short stories in which children live outside the structures of normal societies. At Amazon: French/dp/2070373657/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1442499751&sr=8- 1&keywords=mondo+et+autres+histoires">Mondo et autres histoires Good luck. (Edit: you'll have to remove the spaces in the link) Edited by obsculta on 17 September 2015 at 4:43pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4906 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 19 of 20 06 October 2015 at 4:26am | IP Logged | ||
It sounds like a great life's work - and we have similar ambitions! My experience is that it takes about a year of standard studying before I can start working on actual novels. I've tried to start earlier, but it's just frustrating. During the second year I usually focus mostly on reading, and find that I can make rapid progress if I aim for 50 + pages / week. I agree 100% with those that recommended to use a lot of audio in the beginning. It really will help a lot with the reading. It helps in understanding the cadences of the language. Sometimes, if I stumble over a passage, I can slow down and re-read it semi-aloud & find it makes sense. French Proust is amazing, but slow going! There was a reading club on Goodreads that took a full year to read À la recherche du temps perdu in English. Who knows how many years it will take me in French. I read the first book about three years ago, and I just started the fourth (Le Côté de Guermantes II) last month. I took a lot of breaks, but I've gotten so used to his style now, and I'm so enmeshed in the story, that I might binge and finish the whole series before Spring. There are so many great French writers - you could spend a lifetime just reading the classics here. Italian Italian for Dante is tricky. I've read the Inferno, but was totally reliant on an English parallel translation. I was in an Italian bookstore, and saw a copy of Purgatorio where the text had footnotes in modern Italian. I really wish I had picked it up then; I haven't seen anything like it on Amazon. If you see a copy like this grab it! I haven't tackled any other Italian classics, but for modern works Primo Levi should be on everyone's reading list. Dino Buzzati is very accessible, Umberto Eco is easier than I thought he would be, and Italo Calvino is challenging. I hear good things about Elsa Morante. Greek I spent a year struggling through Homer. It was rewarding, but super hard and I don't think I retained much. My new plan is to tackle the Greek classics from the other direction; I'll learn a bit of modern Greek and then work backwards through Koine to the Golden Age and then, maybe, one day when I'm 70, I'll try Homer again. German, Spanish, and maybe Latin & Russian are others on my long-term with list. It matches up pretty closely with yours - good luck! 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Striver Newbie United States Joined 3384 days ago 8 posts - 15 votes Studies: French | Message 20 of 20 06 October 2015 at 5:02am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the great post Kanewai. Always glad to hear from likeminded others.
I finished l'etranger. It took some doing but I think I gained a lot. Since finishing it I've been listening to the book on audio, reread random pages on a whim, and done a bit of LR. Also been doing a vocab course for the book on Memrise. My comprehension keeps moving forward. I'm also working my way through Le Petit Prince. It's a touch easier than L'etranger - maybe because it is a simpler book or I'm a bit more experienced - but I find it to be a much more enjoyable work to be sure. La renard is very wise. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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