I am afraid I fell again this morning – turned round too fast once more. This is such a bore, but no real damage done, apart from the fact that I have, once again, had to miss going to Church.
On to more cheerful topics. My faithful reader will remember that a. sent me a detective novel in French. I thought it served me right for being somewhat pretentious with my choice of books to take to a desert island. It wasn’t meant to be that way; my choice was meant to give me sufficient reading material to keep me going for the long weeks until a rescue might be made,
She knows from earlier posts that I enjoy detective stories and I had talked about how interesting it was to read novels written by and about people from other countries. The detective story does not have an infinity of variations; the variety comes from the characters, the settings, the climate, often the political issues. I mentioned several countries and a. correctly named the authors from each. She told me of a French author (Fred Vargas) whom I hadn’t come across, and so I bought 4 of this author’s books. To date I have read one of them.
Because of the fact that I had named 2 books in French to take to the desert island, she kindly sent me a Fred Vargas book in its original French, which she was sure had not been translated into English. The book was called Sans Feu ni Lieu. To start with (in fact for the first chapter) I found it very hard going as I kept trying to translate it word for word into English and there were quite a number of words I did not know. Then I followed a.’s advice and just read on in French – quite slowly, and I am sure you could see my lips move! There were quite a number of words that I did not understand still, and sometimes I had to read a page twice, but I got there.
What is more I even knew who the killer was well before the end of the book!
By the way, I loved the toad. (cryptic message to a.)
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4 comments:
I do hope you're all right, not too bumped and bruised.
I'm *so* glad you enjoyed the book! Now then, I have a few others, how about, hmm let's see .....?
Umm' you're determined to exercise my brain - could help to ward off Alzheimers!
We'll be back in France for a short break at New Year, so I'll have a rummage then :)
Many thanks! Do you want me to return Sans feu ni lieu? btw, just to prove I did understand most of it, I was sure it was the guy who looked like a toad when he went on about how fond he was of Marthe's protege, and then reckoned he was the rapist who escaped and that he wanted to get his revenge for having his attack thwarted.
YES!
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