(Click to see full image)

This will probably be gone from Penguin's site tomorrow, so I thought I'd preserve this moment of glory. This is nearly as big as "Employee of the Month"

Nearly as big as employee of the month? Ya, but does he get half off the cheeseburger combo?

Bellham

Today it is Andre Gide

Hmmm, wouldn't have been my first choice. But then, I'm not really very much into French literatur. Now that I think about it, not one single book pops into mind when it comes to great French autors.

How about you folks ... any recomandable French books or authors you know about?

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There's a place at 127.0.0.1 - I've seen it!

For this crowd, I would recommend Bernard Werber's L'empire des Anges (Empire of the Ants)

I just ordered Les champs magnétiques by André Breton and Philippe Soupault from the library. Should be an interesting (not to mention rather challenging) read.

maybe this link could be of some use...

For anyone with a love for words, books, and ideas I would recommend Camus. I read his novel fragment, The First Man (unfinished when he died), at the hospital when I had just given birth. To me a truly magic choice of book - so totally appropriate for my state of mind at that specific time.

favorite writer:
Raymond Roussel.

Check out his life, too.

Yeah, there just isn't much good French literature, except for Voltaire, Dumas, Flaubert, Rimbaud, Camus, Sartre...and those guys are all fuckin' hacks anyway.

Let's go read Stephen King!

I was thinking Camus as well. L'Etranger came to mind. But I'd also recommend Nausea (La Nausee) by Jean-Paul Sartre. I'm very fond of him.

Rimbaud, Le Bateau Ivre (The Drunken Boat) and Une Saison en Enfer (A Season in Hell) were pretty. I have a book with the two combined.

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I'm sorry, I don't speak English.

This is a really good book: A Very Long Engagement by Sébastien Japrisot.

"In January 1917, five wounded French soldiers, their hands bound behind them, are brought to the front of Picardy by their own troops, forced into the no-man's land between the French and German armies, and left to die in the cross fire.
Their brutal punishment has been hushed up for more than two years when Mathilde Donnay, unable to walk since childhood, begins a relentless quest to find out whether her fiance, officially "killed in the line of duty," might still be alive. Tipped off by a letter from a dying soldier, the shrewd, sardonic, and wonderfully imaginative Mathilde scours the country for information about the men. As she carries her search to its end, an elaborate web of deception and coincidence emerges, and Mathilde comes to an understanding of the horrors, and the acts of kindness, brought about by war."

Read it before the movie comes - »Amelie« director Jean-Pierre Jeunet and star Audrey Tautou are working on it right now.

quote:

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Originally posted by Newromancer:

Now that I think about it, not one single book pops into mind when it comes to great French autors.
How about you folks ... any recomandable French books or authors you know about?

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Certainly: Emile Zola's La Terre. A very good (and very grim) story, richly told.

While I can't say I'm a fan of their nation, there are some good French writers.

Andres Malraux, LA CONDITION HUMAINE (MAN'S FATE)
--terrific book about the Chinese revolution and the psychology of subversion and terrorism. Everybody should read this thing in college.

Moliere!, TARTUFFE, A DOCTOR DESPITE HIMSELF, etc.
--you can't think of great playwrights without thinking of Moliere. He was to comedy what Shakespeare was to tragedy.

Voltaire and Camus are also honorable mentions. Rousseau, however, can just go and get bent.

--------"Somebody hits me, I'm going to hit him back. Even if it does look like he hasn't eaten in a while." -Charles Barkley

I think I've read Empire of the Ants. A truly bizarre book.

Apart from the authors listed, there is a book I read that I think was translated from French, but I can't remember the title or the author. The cover showed a cut away of a large house and the book was about the occupants of the various rooms in the house, and there was some mysterious connaction between the rooms and the chapters, from what I recall. If anyone has read it and remember what it is...

Kradlum, that sounds like "Life: a Users Manual" by Georges Perec.

Link

Anytime you see a sex comedy with hallway jokes, you can say merci to Monsieur Moliere.

And Zazie dans le Métro by Raymond Queneau is a fabulously inventive and funny book. You really should read it if you have any interest in language and wordplay and what you can do with unreliable narration to comedic effect.
The translator of the English version Barbara Wright deserves a lot more than just cash. Or maybe just lots of cash.

Louis Malle's film version is not bad either.

The author of the day is:
Vladimir Nabokov

Hey, this could be a new game, match a song with the author of the day!

It's no good, he sees her, he starts to shake and cough, just like the old man in that book by Nabokov.

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I'm sorry, I don't speak English.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery


...lest we forget the beauty of flight.

you quoted sting??? How could you??
j/k

(Insert witticism here)