Continuing from the last post.
I was thinking this morning, it's too bad that I didn't buy anything in Italian. I have exactly one book in Italian (not counting the first one that I set aside after discovering that it famously includes lots of Sicilian which is impenetrable by all my Italian dictionaries), which I was using to slowly improve my Italian before leaving. I'd like to continue studying Italian---and also to maintain my French---and to reprise my haphazard study of Somali out of local interest---argh, so many languages, so little time.
Oh well, I do have French covered for the next couple years of reading, anyway. That's pretty optimistic, actually. I doubt I will get through these all in two years.
+ + +
Cuisine Facile pour Parents Pressés, from the "Mon Cahier" series
All the bookstores I entered in France had a spinning metal rack stocked with these little self-help paperbacks, all labeled with some variation on "Mon Cahier" (My Notebook). Recipe books, diet advice of all kinds, home organization, budgeting, meditation, juicing, controlling your temper, positive thinking. All the ones I picked up begin with a Cosmo-style quiz to find out what sort of cook/housekeeper/thinker you are and purport to design their approach to your type.
I am fascinated with cross-cultural self-help advice and I was sorely tempted to buy several. I restricted myself to one that might actually be useful to me. This one, in case you can't tell, is "Easy Cooking for Busy Parents." (I wish, now, that I had also bought "Cooking for Less Than 3 Euros.")
Do you want to know what French "Easy Cooking for Busy Parents" has for main dishes?
Open-faced sandwiches with meat, cheese, and pickled cucumbers and onions; risotto-style shell pasta with mushrooms, Mimolette cheese aged six months, and ham; "authentic Cantonese rice" which is essentially fried basmati rice with egg, chives, peas, ham, and five-spice powder; croque-monsieur type sandwiches stuffed with duck breast and tomato marmalade (or maybe it's dried tomatoes in oil); potato galette with smoked salmon.
I think I will enjoy playing with some of these. But I don't know that it will be any easier than what I've been doing. On the other hand, it will give me an excuse to find out if any of the cheese shops around here carry Mimolette, which Googling taught me just now is "A gratable, melting cheese ike parmesan, but brilliant orange." Orange cheese! And French!
+ + +
Aurélie Valognes, En Voiture, Simone!
I picked this up from a bestseller table, knowing nothing whatsoever about the novelist or the book. The title appears to mean Get in the car, Simone!; the previous title advertised on the book sleeve apparently means Grandma in the Nettles.
I picked it up because the setup didn't sound amusing but it claims to be a comedy novel; I was curious because of its apparent popularity. It's exactly the sort of book I would never pick up in English. I'll just translate the back of the book for you:
Recipe for an irresistible family comedy: one despotic and selfish father (Jacques), plus one mother (Martine), rebelling after forty years of marriage. Also their sons: Matthieu the eternal adolescent although father to three children; Nicolas, chef by day and authoritarian [I think? the word is literally "castrating"] all the time; Alexandre, the dreamer and slacker. And... three deliciously insufferable daughters-in-law! Stéphanie, the anxious mother hen; Laura, the anxious vegetarian; Jeanne, the newest addition, feminist and bewildered, whose arrival is about to throw the family out of balance. Put everyone in a big house in Brittany. Add to this mixture Antoinette, a grandmother with wisdom to rival the Dalai Lama; and one tagalong dog. Stir well, let simmer... and enjoy!
Like I said, this is the sort of book I would never pick up if it were in English and set in the U. S. I generally don't like insufferable characters and am hoping that the dog is the protagonist, or possibly the grandma. But we shall see. It got a lot of one-star reviews on Amazon, but many of these seem to be by people who were disappointed because it was the same as a book sold previously under a different title that they'd already read. So I will keep an open mind.
+ + +
Jochen Gerner, Repères: 2000 Dessins pour Comprendre le Monde
Benchmarks, 2000 Cartoons For Understanding the The World.
The author/artist is the cartoonist for a weekly independent, ad-free newsmagazine called le 1, Un Journal pour Comprendre le Monde (The 1: A Paper for Understanding the World). That's its logo in the lower right corner of the cover.
The paper is called "The 1" because each week's issue concerns one sole topic, about which it says it includes articles from different points of view. It's also a really short newsmagazine, only 16 pages. (Nine euros per month for a digital subscription, in case you're wondering, or about $2.60 an issue.)
The cartoons are mini-lessons in history, culture, and current affairs. A number of them concern topics internal to French policy and government, which I thought I would find interesting and educational; also a great way to learn some vocabulary I don't have.
More of my purchases in another post.
Comments