Would you like to venture into the world of classic French books – but don’t know where to start?
fear not, mon cheris. Learning French through literature can be an easy and enjoyable experience,
You are reading: Easy to read french books for beginners
In this post, I found a place to start in 5 different categories.
content
- 1. best children’s book: “le petit nicolas” by rené goscinny
- 2. best modern classic: “l’Étranger” by albert camus
- 3. best poetry: “caligrammes” by apollinaire
- 4. best classic novel: “le père goriot” by honoré de balzac
- 5. best stories: “contes de la bécasse” by guy de maupassant
download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable pdf that you can take anywhere. click here for a copy. (download)
See Also: 19 Fun, Lighthearted Books that Will Absolutely Delight You
1. best children’s book: “le petit nicolas” by rené goscinny
start slow with a children’s book. many suggest “le petit prince“, and not without good reason. but while “le petit prince” is undoubtedly a classic of French literature, despite its childish presentation, it may surprise you to learn that it was never intended to be a children’s book. Although the realism of the book is based on the imagination, many of the expressions and ideas expressed in the book may be difficult for a first-time reader to understand.
instead, it begins with “le petit nicolas“, written by rené goscinny and illustrated by jean-jacques sempé. Published in 1959, it is an idealized and nostalgic recollection of what it was like to be a boy growing up in France in the 1950s.
what does that mean for readers? well, a lot of things are still relatable, even to today’s kids and adults. the games may be slightly different, the lingo is a bit outdated, and the uniforms and separation of boys and girls in the 1950s French school system may be a bit dated. however, the ever-present cancre, which cannot answer any question correctly, and the chouchouor the teacher’s pet are just as present in these classrooms as they are in those of the Classic American children’s stories. A multitude of other characters make up Little Nicholas’s circle of friends and play supporting roles in his adventures. Because the story lines are built for children, they are easy to follow. This means that you will be able to figure out the meaning of half of the unknown vocabulary words without even consulting the dictionary.
if you liked “le petit nicolas”, try:
the aftermath! there are five original books, each containing between ten and twenty stories. and the even more recent movie is surprisingly true to the books and fun to watch.
2. best modern classic: “l’Étranger” by albert camus
This may seem a bit cliche, but don’t skip the step just yet. there’s a good reason I’ve selected “l’Étranger”, also known as “the stranger”, and it’s not just because it’s popular with highbrows and hipsters alike .
Camus, a French pied-noir born in Algeria during the period of French colonization, wrote this novel with the voice of Meursault, a fictional character who shares the author’s lineage and recounts with astonishing he neglected his mother’s life. funeral and his own subsequent run-in with the law.
Camus best summed up the impetus for the story in 1955 when he said, “In our society, any man who does not cry at his mother’s funeral risks being sentenced to death.” meursault is a man who refuses to play the game society demands he play, and as a result is a strange and unknown storyteller who presents a worldview that is at once one-dimensional and trustworthy, simple and complex.
See Also: The Best Resources and Books for Natural Birth
While Meursault’s thought processes and motivations may be difficult to understand, his words are not. any student of literature will enjoy reading the book, as the difficulty here is not in the language but in what lies beneath the words themselves.
if you liked “l’Étranger”, try:
“la chute”, also by albert camus. a story of another french expat, this time in amsterdam. the entire book is written in one-sided dialogue, with the reader replacing the mostly silent interlocutor. the style may be more difficult to get used to than “l’Étranger”, but nonetheless an excellent read and not too challenging, from a linguistic point of view.
3. best poetry: “caligrammes” by apollinaire
It is difficult to pick out just one period of French poetry to focus on, without mentioning just one poet. But for foreign students of French, Apollinaire’s poems offer something that most other poems do not: hints of meaning in their very structure. his book is notable for its use of typography and page spacing; the poem is often literally constructed in a way that evokes its meaning.
some examples from the book include “cheval”, “la colombe poignardée et le jet d’eau”, and “la mandoline, l’oeillet et le bambou”, all of which are written in such a way that the poem itself takes the shape of its subject.
the poems are some of the first French surrealist works; in fact, apollinaire is credited with coining the term, so within this relatively easy-to-understand construction there are poems of a certain degree of complexity, but they are worth the effort. is needed to understand them.
if you liked “caligrammes”, try:
“the flowers of evil” by charles baudelaire. Apollinaire’s predecessor deconstructed the poetic genre in his own way, writing poems in prose. Apollinaire is credited with inspiring Baudelaire’s way of exploring modernity.
4. best classic novel: “le père goriot” by honoré de balzac
French literature can be loosely divided into periods according to the century. the sixteenth century was that of the poem and the sonnet; the 17th was that of the work; the 18th, of the philosophical essay; and 19, from the novel. Perhaps no one embodied this genre of writing as well as Honoré de Balzac, who sought to write all of humanity: the human comedy, as he called it. this enterprise resulted in no less than 93 novels, plays and short stories, collected and known as “la comédie humaine”. featured a cast of recurring characters; the main characters of one novel would pass through the background of the other. In this way, Balzac created his own world, his own human comedy.
many of the novels that form part of balzac’s oeuvre are well known, but le père goriot”is one of the most famous. Balzac’s style was criticized in its day for being too simple, but that is exactly what makes it so appropriate for students of French. Balzac is excellent at telling a story for what it is. there are few twists and turns, and most of the surprises are hidden from other characters, not the reader.
balzac’s attention to detail and his keen desire to allow the story to unfold step by step means that the novel, which depicts the lives of three men living in a boarding house in 19th century paris, is easy to read. understand, regardless of use. of certain words such as redingote and vermicellier, whose usefulness in everyday conversation in the 21st century is debatable.
if you liked “le père goriot”, try:
See Also: 8 Marvel Comics Worth Big Money | Quality Comix
“ferragus“, also from honoré de balzac. this story explores secret lives and secret identities, with appearances by some of the characters you may have already met in “le père goriot”.
5. best short stories: “contes de la bécasse” by guy de maupassant
Maupassant became famous in the late 19th century as a realist novelist with a style bordering on the naturalism for which Zola was becoming known at the same time. his “contes de la bécasse”, or “tales of the woodcock”, is a collection of various stories. the first is a preamble explaining the premise: the baron of ravots has organized a dinner where the guest who has the privilege of eating all the woodcock heads is asked to tell a story to the rest of the group; the stories that follow are meant to be these.
The realism and shorter length of the stories make for easy reading, and if nothing else, your hunting vocabulary will improve by leaps and bounds.
if you liked “contes de la bécasse”, try:
“pierre et jean”, a novel by Maupassant that tells the story of two brothers. The psychorealist work is Maupassant’s shortest novel, so he will still notice some of the urgency evoked in his stories, particularly given the subject matter of this intriguing work.
A less conventional option is to move to short story videos with subtitles or just short videos. Short, authentic videos like the ones you’ll find on fluentu are great for learning to read French faster, since you need to keep up with the speed of the video.
On fluentu, you can find animated short stories, as well as other engaging French media, like movie trailers, news segments, clips from TV shows, and more. There are accurate captions for each video, allowing you to see the meaning of any word in context and add words to card lists for later review. fluentu also has keyword lists and interactive transcripts to give you more reading practice.
When you practice reading with short videos with subtitles, you’ll be preparing yourself for longer videos, like full-length movies, and longer books, like novels.
It is always recommended to vary the activities to practice reading in French, especially since the content of textbooks can become outdated and unmotivated. don’t be afraid to branch out!
And when you’re ready to study longer texts, the above pieces of literature are enough to take your fluency to the next level.
Good luck on your French literary journey!
download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable pdf that you can take anywhere. click here for a copy. (download)
See Also: 19 Fun, Lighthearted Books that Will Absolutely Delight You