Edited by Gill Burrell, Tuesday, 1 July 2025, 15:23
The weather is very hot this June. We had temperatures of 29°-30° and it is set to get hotter! There was just one or two days when there was a shower or two but nothing serious.
While I await my results for my Degree in July, I am sitting in my garden, reading another book in french by Louis-Ferdinand Céline called "Voyage au bout de la Nuit" translated means "Journey to the end of the night" but it is a bit controversial, as it is anti-war and is based on the life of a man who travels to different places and who has various adventures.
This semi-autobiographical work follows the adventures of Ferdinand Bardamu in World War I, colonial Africa, the United States and the poor suburbs of Paris where he works as a doctor.
I do not know if I will be able read it all, in my opinion it is not really my usual type of book. It is dense and quite difficult to read. However, having said that it won the Prix Renaudot in 1932 but divided critics due to the author's pessimistic depiction of the human condition and his innovative writing style based on working class speech, slang and neologisms. But, according to "Le monde" it is now widely considered to be one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.
I am reading this book for a much better, and for a wider understanding of the french language.
My other book is in english entitled " The Human Stain"
by Philip Roth. It's about a professor who is sacked for supposedly making racist comments about some students, but he denies this accusation, saying that the word meant something different to him. At the same time he is coming to terms with his own unique ethnicity. It is about his adventures through his later years. Set in America ( during the Clinton era.)
I am always trawling the charity shops for books to read that are not too expensive! I never know what the book is going to contain as I just read a little bit about it on the back cover.
Reading Books in French and English
The weather is very hot this June. We had temperatures of 29°-30° and it is set to get hotter! There was just one or two days when there was a shower or two but nothing serious.
While I await my results for my Degree in July, I am sitting in my garden, reading another book in french by Louis-Ferdinand Céline called "Voyage au bout de la Nuit" translated means "Journey to the end of the night" but it is a bit controversial, as it is anti-war and is based on the life of a man who travels to different places and who has various adventures.
This semi-autobiographical work follows the adventures of Ferdinand Bardamu in World War I, colonial Africa, the United States and the poor suburbs of Paris where he works as a doctor.
I do not know if I will be able read it all, in my opinion it is not really my usual type of book. It is dense and quite difficult to read. However, having said that it won the Prix Renaudot in 1932 but divided critics due to the author's pessimistic depiction of the human condition and his innovative writing style based on working class speech, slang and neologisms. But, according to "Le monde" it is now widely considered to be one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.
I am reading this book for a much better, and for a wider understanding of the french language.
My other book is in english entitled " The Human Stain"
by Philip Roth. It's about a professor who is sacked for supposedly making racist comments about some students, but he denies this accusation, saying that the word meant something different to him. At the same time he is coming to terms with his own unique ethnicity. It is about his adventures through his later years. Set in America ( during the Clinton era.)
I am always trawling the charity shops for books to read that are not too expensive! I never know what the book is going to contain as I just read a little bit about it on the back cover.