La Fortune des Rougon by Zola, Émile
French English (entries)
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Project created:5 February 2013
Description
Challenge: read french books for 1 year (15 June 2012-2013) and see if you have learned the 4000-5000 most frequent words that account of up to 95% of a written text.
So far I have read 7 books. Everybody is takling about Les Mis ....but I have decided to tackle Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris. This cathedral is the central character of the book and we are celebrating the 850th anniversary of the most famous Gothic Church in the world!
Reading List
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Comments
uskl914
10 years, 10 months ago
Progress is slow, but that is still progress! Struggled through livre 3, book I and II.
I = love letter to the Notre-Dame Cathedral and its architecture
II = Notre-Dame is the center of Paris for "Paris à vol d'oiseau".
Picking up speed now and reading is getting so much easier!
"Never, never, never give up" ( Winston Churchill)
uskl914
10 years, 9 months ago
Did my best today but there were too many other things to do....8 km run, watch speed skating World Cup in Norway and catch up on some Oscar nominated films and documentries.
uskl914
10 years, 9 months ago
Reading french is like learing to jog. Keep practicing 4 - 5 times a week, take a rest regularly and suddenly one day you can run/read equal to a 10 km race!
uskl914
10 years, 8 months ago
Once I choose the french classic, my first thoughts are: "I'll never finish this one!" After 400 pages the task gets easier. Today, lots of dialogue and I met brigands (rascals), gueux (beggers), buveurs (drinkers), larrons (thieves) and rôdeurs (stalkers). ...123 page to read.
uskl914
10 years, 8 months ago
Best chapter "Lasciate Ogni Speranza" (abandon all hope). Claude Frollo, the celibate priest is obsessed with La Esmerelda. 10 pages of lust, longing and her revulsion. CF offers to save her from the gallows. Her answer: Rien ne nous réunira, pas meme l'enfer! ( nothing will unite us, not even hell).
uskl914
10 years, 8 months ago
Quasimodo rescues La Esmerelda from the gallows and hides her in the church. Victor Hugo has written about a tender love story b/t the beauty and the beast. These last chapters took my breath away. "Ne regarde pas la figure, jeune fille, regarde le coeur...."
uskl914
10 years, 8 months ago
How does the book end? I don't know. Never read the book or saw the movie, so I am waiting for the "dénouement". Book has 536 pages, 11 books, 59 chapters and published in 1831. Statistics: read 87.7 % and have just 66 pages to go!
uskl914
10 years, 8 months ago
59 chapters, some boring, some full of Gothic architecture info and some in which it feels as if the characters seem to be breathing off the pages! Don't miss the exciting writing describing Quasimodo defending the Notre-Dame form an attack by the medieval rabble. Are the just trying to free La Esmerelda or strip the altars an the church of its wealth? You decide!" Just 31 more pages!!!
uskl914
10 years, 8 months ago
Finally I have reached " le fini" ....the end.
Victor Hugo has enriched my reading pleasure, more than Gustave Flaubert. Style, structure, language and I must admit a love story filled to the brim with melodrama! He exaggerates plot and characters in order to appeal to the emotions.
Victor Hugo even gave met wonderful advice ( found in a love letter to his mistress Juliette Drouet) which keeps met going while struggling with the french language:
“Time can never hang heavy when
one is laboring honestly; study carries more
flowers than thorns.”
http://ipsofactodotme.wordpress.com/2013/03/23/notre-dame-de-paris/
Of all the classic french writers I have read so far ( in french) Flaubert, Maupassant Daudet....Victor Hugo is the most likeable . Faubert was complex, Maupassant had an axe to grind ( politics and it's influence on journalism) and Daudet was a homesick writer in Paris who longed for his warm Provence. Hugo is just a great story teller with a knack for keeping the "text" rolling along in compact, lucid and readable french.