I took seven semesters of French in college, and though I’ve never been to a French-speaking country, my knowledge of the language, particularly the written languate, was pretty strong when I graduated. In the past three years, though, I’ve barely used it. I’ve been wanting to read the Harry Potter books anyway, so I figured, hey, might as well give myself a refresher course in French while I’m at it.
Amazingly, the Boston Public Library had a copy of the first HP book in French, and it’s now in my possession. I figure if French 8-year olds can read them, so can I, right? Kinda. It took 45 minutes with dictionary in hand to get through 10 pages yesterday. But actually that was better than I thought I would do.
Hopefully I will soon be the only person in the world to have read only and exactly the following combination of books in French:
1. Huis Clos by Jean-Paul Sartre
2. Surveillir et Punir by Michel Foucault
3. Harry Potter a L’Ecole des Sorciers by JK Rowling