Tuesday, August 24, 2010

French Reads Wishlisting + Other Frenchness

As Fall draws near, I'm starting to get my wishlist of French books sorted out. When I was in France last year, I promised myself that to always stay up to date on my French and keep practicing the language, I'd set aside a budget each year so that as the year drew to a close, I'd be able to buy (and import of course) a nice stack of books by French authors (and in French!) to keep me busy and enthralled until the next year. The past 7 or 8 months, I've been reading French book blogs to get some ideas, as well as visiting sites like Fnac.com, and reading book reviews and synopses. I've got a large list, but I'd like to narrow it down to what will fit in my budget (plus shipping!). By the end of September or October I'd like to have my list complete so I can send in my order :) I'm pretty psyched about this and I'll be sharing some of my picks with you over the next few months as I narrow things down!

And keeping with the French theme of this post, classes at Buff State start on Monday!  Tomorrow, I have the pleasure of visiting the French department during Freshman orientation to speak with incoming language students about my "language experiences".  I am super psyched to do this!  I also need to run some school related errands while on campus, like get my parking permit and book deferment.  Then I get to give my best friend since 6th grade a tour of the campus (she's a transfer student and we'll finally be in the same school again for the first time since high school!!).  So tomorrow will be fun :)  Now to just make work go by quickly today!

2 comments:

  1. Sounds like a good way to keep your skills up to date. I took French in high school and college and was all set to go over my Junior Year but kept getting massive headaches after each French class so I decided not to go. (I was even taking a French lit class ... reading and dicussing in French ... too much for me!) In retrospect, I wish I had gone ... I think immersing yourself in the language is the only way to truly learn it.

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  2. Oh definitely :) I've always been a good student but it wasn't until I went and lived in France for a semester that I got really good with the language, especially speaking and listening comphrehension. It can be really hard at times but I just keep chugging along. And I totally know what you mean about those headaches!! Last semester I had a once a week class, 3 hours long, where we read only books by Emile Zola. We got through two of them and had to read almost a hundred pages a week and then discuss symbols in the text and whatnot. Never again!!

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