OU blog

Personal Blogs

French Books 📚

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Gill Burrell, Thursday, 23 Nov 2023, 16:26

Finished studying french for my last module french L332, Now whenever I come across an unfamiliar word in french I look it up immediately in my french/english dictionary or on google translate.
•  Watched the News in french I have watched France24 a news channel you can access it online for free.
I also read le monde and le figaro newspapers online. Now I have finished all my french modules but I am still regularly reading, watching the news in french online which I find very interesting.

• Read books in french. I have collected quite a few books from the book shop in the nearest city to where I live. The prices are quite reasonable (2nd hand) If I am really lucky I can even obtain a nearly new copy which is in excellent condition. I also return books that I have finished reading.
I have read the following in french ;

• Jules Verne- Voyage au centre de la terre( voyage to the centre of the earth)

• Victor Hugo - " les miserables,"                  

• "le Bossu de Notre Dame"(the hunchback of Notredam.
• The Poems of Victor Hugo.                 "Madame Bovary"by Flaubert.            •"Germinal" and "Nana"  by Emile Zola.              •"Le petit prince" Novella by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

• Honoré de Balzac- "Comedie Humaine"  •Marcel Proust- "Swanns way"                 

•"L'étranger" by Albert Camus

•Poems de Baudlaire.

Also read books by these authors;

• Simone de Beauvoire
Collette.                •Philipe Sollers,  •Salinger 

• And many of the books from the "Maigret" french detective series by George Simenon of which I am totally addicted to!!


• Now Watching films in french Some fims I have liked to watch are; Les miserables, Germinal "Manon des Sources" and others like  "Amelie"  "Cafe de Flore"  "Paris Je T' Aime"

"Le regle du jeu"  "Jean de Florette"  " Three colours blue"
"La Vie en Rose", "La Haine," "An Andalusian Dog," The 400 Blows" and "The untouchables"     "Portrait of a lady on fire " (2019)I intend to watch all these films just again to make sure I can understand them.

The TV seies "Paris Police 1905"

The detective films like "Maigret" and "Spiral"
And many of the books by french authors that have been adapted for film.
I have also being watching some of the latest modern french films that have been shown on TV. Using the subtitles in english until I become more proficient in understanding french.

Each day I try to keep to studying one or more of these three mediums including online websites each day to try to  keep my french skills polished and up to scratch!

Permalink
Share post

Comments

Steven McDonald

New comment

Hi Gill,

Something I found helpful when learning Dutch was to follow social media accounts that post in Dutch. That tends to get more exposure to modern colloquialisms than the more formal and/or prepared language often used in news, books and movies. Just an idea!

Steven

New comment

Thank you Steven I will look into that possibility.

Best wishes

Gill