The Concert: A Novel Review

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The Concert: A Novel Reviewthis book is amazing. it's so sweeping in scope and vast in its concerns. chronicling the decline and eventual fall of the diplomatic ties between albania and china, the novel centers on several characters whose lives are directly and indirectly implicated by the sinister game-play of doublespeak and ambivalent symbolic gestures which are hallmarks of chinese politics. this novel is relentless in its critical view of a very complicated relationship, but it does not fall into the trap of blaming or accusation on either. instead, Kadare carefully delineates the various nuances emitted by the Chinese government which are then carefully, if not always successfully, interpreted by the Albanian government so as to chart the next political move. Mao Zedong is given a certain prominence here, and the novel's marvellous rendition of this strange man and his predilection with death and the theatre would give any psychoanalyst a field day. in my view, the most compelling section of the novel is the interchapter of the tragedy of macbeth, which can be read as a cleverly intertext of the history of the power-struggle between Zedong and his marshall, Lin Biao, and/or as the superior-subordinate dialectic between China and Albania. truly, Kadare is one of the 20th (and the 21st) century's most important writer, and this novel is enough to vouch for his excellence.The Concert: A Novel Overview

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The Dangerous Book of Heroes Review

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The Dangerous Book of Heroes ReviewThe latest installment in the "Dangerous Book" series is "The Dangerous Book of Heroes." It's a fairly thick volume with dozens of short biographies, which range from about a dozen to twenty pages. For me, that makes it a perfect book for Reading While Waiting. I spend a lot of time in doctor's offices, so waiting is a huge part of my life. These short biographies are just the right length to entertain and engage me before the doctor knocks on the door. I found the choice of Heroes to be especially interesting, especially since I had never heard of at least one of them referred to in any kind of a positive way before.
The book starts out with George Washington, and discussed many things I had never considered about the Father of our country. For instance, his biography begins by calling him neither a great soldier nor a great farmer, just a man put in the right place at the right time. It's a theory that carries throughout the book.
Part of the reason I really liked this book is the idea that anyone can be a hero, given the circumstances. The passengers of Flight 93 on September 11, 2001 were heroes, although I don't think that any one of them thought that they would save the lives of thousands when they boarded their plane. Yet I think their inclusion in this book of heroes is perfect.
All in all, I recommend this book for any reader over the age of twelve or so, anyone old enough to accept the fact that not every story ends happily and that not all heroes have medals. I think it would be especially wonderful to read as a family, and to discuss the heroes listed here, and if they agree with the author that these people are heroes at all. (I agree with most, but not all of the people listed here, and there are a few others I'd have included)The Dangerous Book of Heroes Overview

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Heart of Darkness (Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism) Review

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Heart of Darkness (Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism) ReviewI would like to address myself specifically to the Norton Critical Edition of this book. The difficulty that many readers face when they pick up a classic, pre-twentieth century novel is that they are not conversant with the history of the times in which it was written. Heart of Darkness can be enjoyed purely as a well written novella, but then you miss so much of what Conrad is trying to say not only regarding the thin veneer of man's social persona (ala Lord of the Flies) but about the evils of 19th century imperialism. What is the story of Colonialism? Do Conrad's derogatory remarks about Blacks make him a bigot? What were Conrad's overall views on life? What were Conrad's personal experiences in the Congo? What did readers think of Heart of Darkness when it was written, and what do the critics think of it today?
The Norton Critical Edition gives you 325 extra pages of material written by Conrad and others that provide answers to the above questions. You don't have to read all of these many articles, of course, but a good sampling of them will make your immersion in this famous story all the more enjoyable and meaningful.
This is a story that everyone should read, and the Norton Critical Edition provides the best format for the reading experience.Heart of Darkness (Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism) OverviewWritten several years after Conrad's grueling sojourn in the Belgian Congo, the novel tells the story of Marlow, a seaman who undertakes his own journey into the African jungle to find the tormented white trader Kurtz.

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The Mathematician's Brain: A Personal Tour Through the Essentials of Mathematics and Some of the Great Minds Behind Them Review

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The Mathematician's Brain: A Personal Tour Through the Essentials of Mathematics and Some of the Great Minds Behind Them ReviewThe author, who is a very distinguished mathematician, gives his personal view on how mathematicians think. It is welcome to have books like this written by real mathematicians, as opposed to philosophers who doesn't know that much math. While professional mathematicians might not learn much, students of mathematics can get some very nice insights into how mathematics and mathematicians work.
Unfortunately, some parts of the book that discuss specific mathematics (as opposed to what mathematics is like in general) are not clearly written and should have been edited better. For example, it shakes the confidence of the reader when early on, the pythagorean theorem is stated incorrectly, and then on the next page a statement is asserted to follow from the pythagorean theorem, when it actually follows from the converse of the pythagorean theorem. Most readers of the book will probably know this anyway so it doesn't matter, but later, descriptions of more advanced mathematical concepts are sometimes so brief that they would probably be incomprehensible to someone who does not already know them, and puzzling to someone who does.
Disclosure: I only skimmed this in the bookstore because I didn't feel like paying 20 cents per page for it. I hope that an inexpensive paperback edition will appear, with corrections.The Mathematician's Brain: A Personal Tour Through the Essentials of Mathematics and Some of the Great Minds Behind Them Overview
The Mathematician's Brain poses a provocative question about the world's most brilliant yet eccentric mathematical minds: were they brilliant because of their eccentricities or in spite of them? In this thought-provoking and entertaining book, David Ruelle, the well-known mathematical physicist who helped create chaos theory, gives us a rare insider's account of the celebrated mathematicians he has known-their quirks, oddities, personal tragedies, bad behavior, descents into madness, tragic ends, and the sublime, inexpressible beauty of their most breathtaking mathematical discoveries.

Consider the case of British mathematician Alan Turing. Credited with cracking the German Enigma code during World War II and conceiving of the modern computer, he was convicted of "gross indecency" for a homosexual affair and died in 1954 after eating a cyanide-laced apple--his death was ruled a suicide, though rumors of assassination still linger. Ruelle holds nothing back in his revealing and deeply personal reflections on Turing and other fellow mathematicians, including Alexander Grothendieck, Ren Thom, Bernhard Riemann, and Felix Klein. But this book is more than a mathematical tell-all. Each chapter examines an important mathematical idea and the visionary minds behind it. Ruelle meaningfully explores the philosophical issues raised by each, offering insights into the truly unique and creative ways mathematicians think and showing how the mathematical setting is most favorable for asking philosophical questions about meaning, beauty, and the nature of reality.

The Mathematician's Brain takes you inside the world--and heads--of mathematicians. It's a journey you won't soon forget.


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The Facts of Winter Review

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The Facts of Winter ReviewPaul La Farge's book THE FACTS OF WINTER is a haunting, funny, intriguing, little book. There are echoes of the unreliable editor of Nabokov's Pale Fire or the authorial self-awareness of Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveler and the strings of strange little stories like Calvino's Invisible Cities. Yet, it is a lovely work in it's own right and is in no way derivative of these earlier works.
The book features a series of short dreams (1-3 pages) of Parisians in 1881. On facing pages, the reader is treated to French and English versions of the dream narratives followed by an academic-styled afterward examining the life of the ersatz author Paul Poissel. The writing is lyrical and the reader has a haunting feeling of the interconnectedness of certain images and ideas among the dreams that in a way that is highly pleasing but difficult to explain. If one reads even a little French there are certain sly winks in the French. As discussed in the afterward, the title itself is a pun in French: Les faits d'hiver or L'effet divers. The illustrations are an added bonus and suit the work perfectly. They remind me of Lorca's doodles.
Much like trying to describe a dream to a friend it is difficult to describe the way the book connects and intertwines as you read it which is perhaps why they other reviews are so brief and why I've resorted to so many comparisons. It is not a book for those who demand straightforward narrative, but for those who enjoy good, poetic writing and are willing to let the work wash over them it is a lovely read. It is the best thing I've read in months.
The Facts of Winter OverviewThe Facts of Winter is a series of dreams, all dreamed by people in and around Paris during the winter of 1881. It is historical fiction once removed: an account of events that were imaginary even from the point of view of an invented past - although Poissel claimed (in a letter to his friend Bartholomeo Facil, August, 1905) that "the characters in this book are all true - all persons who really lived and slept that winter."

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Fathers and Sons (Oxford World's Classics Hardcovers) Review

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Fathers and Sons (Oxford World's Classics Hardcovers) ReviewAs Turgenev preceded Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, I always assumed that he belonged to a stuffier time; picking up "Fathers and Sons" in the bookstore, the first few pages seemed to confirm this assumption. Unlike Dostoevsky's prose, which I've always found compulsively readable, Turgenev's style seemed dense and somewhat stilted. Thankfully, the writing gets much more fluid and engaging as the story progresses.
Turgenev is in fact a wonderful stylist: economical, precise, lyrical when it befits his characters, yet never wordy. Whereas Dostoevsky's characters sometimes seem to be acting in a vacuum, and Tolstoy occassionally digresses into paeans on the wonders of nature, Turgenev straddles the happy medium. There are many brief but vivid descriptions of atmosphere, times of day--a horses hooves flashing at dusk, Arcady and Eugene reclining on recently mown hay--yet they are alway in service to the story and not overly symbolic.
Turgenev's approach to his characters is similarly nimble and balanced; sometimes he adopts a more distant tone, sometimes he's in a particular character's head, sometimes he gives a brief description of a character's backgound, at others a character will relate another's history from his point of view.
In fact everything in the novel testifies to Turgenev's faith in humanity, without ever seeming didactic or boring. All of the characters are sympathetic, and I could imagine actually traveling with them or engaging in conversation with them. Nobody beats Dostoevsky when it comes to penetrating psychological insight and dark humor, but his characters are always on some level types, intended to personify philosophical extremes. Tolstoy always seems to be hiding a profound but nonetheless conservative morality up his sleeve. Turgenev's characters, though, are somehow more believable than either of these author's. Eugene Bazarov and Anna Sergeyevna Odintzov are extreme, intense, and difficult people, but they are not caricatures, and they are no more the center of attention than Arcady, his relatives, or Bazarov's parents. Everone is held in equal regard, but everyone is distinct. In reminds me of Ibsen, who seems to regard his characters with the same sort of passionate, humane equanimity.
In a way, Turgenev is the anti-Dostoevsky (intending no disrespect to the master); at every opportunity where he might stage a cathartic "pathetic scene"--the duel, the climactic encounter over the deathbed of one of the main characters--he stays true to the fundamentally disjointed nature of life. The characters don't kiss and make up, nor do they hurl themselves under trains, yet somehow it remains gripping and illuminating. And Turgenev doesn't succumb to the opposite temptation, namely to undermine the gravity of real feelings by interrupting these scenes with trivial details, as Flaubert does so often in "Madame Bovary" for example.
What else can I say? There's no reason not to give this book a try if you like character driven stories that seem full of the essence of real life. Unlike other great Russian novels, this one is short, so if it's not to your taste, at least it's brief. However, I can almost guarantee that you'll wish it lasted longer, and that it'll leave you with a warm feeling inside.Fathers and Sons (Oxford World's Classics Hardcovers) OverviewFathers and Sons (1862), Turgenev's masterpiece, represents in its hero, Bazarov, 'the new man', a nihilist liberated from age-old conformities and at odds with the previous generation, questioning the very fabric of society.A novel of ideas, Fathers and Sons is also a moving story of human relationships.

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Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language Review

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Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language ReviewWhy is it taboo to talk about menstruation, yet a little more acceptable to refer to "Aunt Flo?" How does something go from being offensive to politically correct (such as race or sexual orientation)? Why are some words offensive by merit of association (i.e. niggardly)?
There are words you shouldn't say in front of children, in mixed company, or to your mother. There are topics best to be avoided. There are terms that get bleeped, politely ignored, and words we tie ourselves into knots to find euphemisms for. These are our forbidden words. They are forbidden because they describe our taboos in frank and blunt ways. We find roundabout ways to describe sex, excrement, eating, menstruation, and death for a reason. The authors of this book explore that reason. They delve into what makes a topic taboo, then into what makes a word taboo.
In general, the authors do not consider censorship--political reasons for considering certain words or topics off-limits or an organized, mandated way of making them so. They are mainly interested in the limits we put on ourselves, on our understanding of social mores that keeps us from spouting off like George Carlin at a business meeting.
While this is a slow and scholarly read, it is unbelievably useful to anyone interested in language and the anthropology of language. Highly recommended.
Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language OverviewMany words and expressions are viewed as 'taboo', such as those used to describe sex, our bodies and their functions, and those used to insult other people. This book provides a fascinating insight into taboo language and its role in everyday life. It looks at the ways we use language to be polite or impolite, politically correct or offensive, depending on whether we are 'sweet-talking', 'straight-talking' or being deliberately rude. Using a range of colourful examples, it shows how we use language playfully and figuratively in order to swear, to insult, and also to be politically correct, and what our motivations are for doing so. It goes on to examine the differences between institutionalized censorship and the ways individuals censor their own language. Lively and revealing, Forbidden Words will fascinate anyone who is interested in how and why we use and avoid taboos in daily conversation.

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Albert Camus's the Stranger (Bloom's Guides) Review

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Albert Camus's the Stranger (Bloom's Guides) ReviewA worthy contribution to the excellent Bloom's Guides series, Bloom's Guides: The Stranger is a comprehensive reading and study guide for students and lay readers alike of Albert Camus' classic existential novel "The Stranger", about a man who almost involuntarily commits an unprovoked murder, yet is unable to explain why he did it, let alone fake remorse. He is ultimately condemned not for the crime itself, but for his failure to express hypocrisy over it; he is unable to immerse himself in the physical and emotional absurdities of daily existence that demand thousands of little lies and great lies from every member of human society. Bloom's Guide: The Stranger features a strong emphasis on summary and analysis, walking the reader step by step through the nuances of this complex yet insightful work of Western literature. Additional enhancements include "The Story Behind the Story", which describes the conditions under which The Stranger was written, a biographical sketch of the author, a descriptive list of characters, and an annotated bibliography. Enthusiastically recommended especially for anyone studying "The Stranger" as part of a literary course or thesis.
Albert Camus's the Stranger (Bloom's Guides) OverviewAlbert Camus's landmark existentialist novel traces the aftermath of a shocking crime and the man whose fate is sealed with one rash and foolhardy act. The Stranger presents readers with a new kind of protagonist, a man unable to transcend the tedium and inherent absurdity of everyday existence in a world indifferent to the struggles and strivings of its human denizens. Complete with an introduction from master literary scholar Harold Bloom, this new edition of full-length critical essays includes a chronology, bibliography, and index for easy reference.--This text refers to the Library Binding edition.

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The Oxford Companion to English Literature Review

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The Oxford Companion to English Literature ReviewThe first 'Oxford Companion to English Literature' was published in 1932 under the editorial direction of Sir Paul Harvey (no relation the American radio commentator). Half a century and five editions later, this is still a standard, authoritative reference work necessary for scholars and interested non-experts alike.
Under the editorship of Margaret Drabble, author and biographer (known for 'The Witch of Exmoor' and the more recently published 'The Peppered Moth'), this volume remains faithful to Harvey's intention of placing English literature in its widest possible context while exploring the deep classical and continental connections that underpin much of the history.
How can literature be divorced from cultural context? Surely it cannot be -- hence the newest entries into the edition include topics that read as if they were taken from today's best-seller shelf:
- Anglo-Indian Literature
- Simon Armitage
- Kate Atkinson
- Louis de Bernieres
- Censorship
- Ben Elton
- Gay and lesbian literature
- Hypertext
- A. L. Kennedy
- Lad's literature
- Literature of science
- New Criticism
- New Irish Playwrights
- Carol Shields
- Travel writing
This sample listing of the latest entries is representative of the more established categories, in that the entries (encyclopedic in character) include Authors, Subjects, Titles, Events, Characters and Critical Theory. The entries are unsigned (an ever-controversial practice in reference works such as this) -- well over a hundred contributors assisted in this volume, including the likes of Matthew Sweet, Salman Rushdie, Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan, Katherine Duncan-Jones, and Brian Vickers.
This volume serves the general reader well in that one may follow cross-reference trails through the text. Take, for instance, Aaron the Moor -- the reader will be directed to Titus Andronicus, to which one is directed to Shakespeare, and from there a host of other cross-references historical and modern. Under the entry of Gabriel Josipovici, one is led back the entries of Rabelais and Bellow, influences as well as objects of Josipovici's study.
The appendices are new features of this edition. The first appendix is a Chronology that lists the chronology of the production of English literature from c.1000 to 1999 side by side with major historical events in Britain and beyond, and the significant events in the lives of literary figures. Appendix 2 lists the Poets Laureate in chronological order, from 1619 (when the office unofficially began) to the present -- surprisingly, there have only been 21 (19 official). Appendix 3 lists major literary award winners: Nobel Prize, Pulitzer Prize, Library Association Carnegie Medalists, and Booker-McConnell Prize for Fiction. Obviously not all of these are British authors, but it helps to place British literature in the wider world context of the twentieth century (as all of these prizes are twentieth-century creations).
In addition to the encyclopedic entries, there are major essays scattered through the text. These include the following topics:
- Biography
- Black British Literature
- Children's Literature
- Detective Fiction
- Fantasy Fiction
- Ghost Stories
- Gothic Fiction
- Historical Fiction
- Metre
- Modernism
- Post-Colonial Literature
- Romanticism
- Science Fiction
- Spy Fiction
- Structuralism and Post-Structuralism
These essays include history and current development of the genre or topic, as well as bibliographic information for further research, which (regrettably) the smaller encyclopedic entries rarely have.
This is a terrific, one-volume reference that should serve well anyone with a need for quick and ready reference material. It should find a welcome home on the shelf of any avid reader, fan of literature and modern fiction, history, religion, or any devoted Anglophile.The Oxford Companion to English Literature Overview

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The Patience Stone Review

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The Patience Stone ReviewIt was difficult for me to think of a good word to describe this short novel, but "unsettling" seems to capture it. Great works of literature are great because they make us uncomfortable, challenge us, and broaden our horizons. "The Patience Stone" accomplishes this in a surprisingly short, but impactful book. I read through it in one sitting; it was so intense at times I wanted to pull away from it, but couldn't.
It's the story of a nameless Afghan woman who is tending to her husband. He is suffering from a wound he endured, apparently, in one of the ongoing tribal conflicts in the country. He is considered a hero, a soldier of jihad. His wound has left him alive, but silent and unmoving. His wife tends to him and prays for him, but progressively becomes more frustrated with the hopelessness of her situation.
The novel never leaves the room in which the man lies. The setting captures the narrow world of the Afghan woman as she is largely confined to the home. As the woman begins to lose her patience, she starts to confide in her husband as he becomes an embodiment of the legendary patience stone. She gradually unfastens the chains of expectation as she reveals her true thoughts and feelings to her husband for the first time-- sometimes sad, sometimes rageful, and sometimes with surprising secrets that she has kept. The volume of her emotion rises to a powerful crescendo and a climax that is ambiguous and thought-provoking.
The author wastes no words; each sentence is written with grace and precision. It's a powerful novel that seeks to give voice to women in Afghanistan. Very highly recommended.The Patience Stone Overview

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Montecore Review

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Montecore ReviewAbbas left Tunisia to settle in Stockholm. Over eight years ago, he vanished. An email from Kadir of Tunisia to first time published novelist Jonas Khemiri offers an intriguing proposition. Kadir claims to have been Abbas' best friend at a Tunisian orphanage while Jonas is Abbas' adult son. The former wants to collaborate with a latter on Abbas's biography.
Abbas came to Sweden without a krona to his name or an identity beyond orphan as he fell in love with a flight attendant. With money lent from Kadir, Abbas follows his beloved to Stockholm, where like a Cinderfella they marry and raise a family. However, the North African fails to adapt to life in Sweden and worse is unable to support his family as a photographer as xenophobic Swediot bigots vandalize his studio. Frustrated in his attempts to fit in while his son taunts him, he gave up and disappeared only to become world recognized as a superstar in New York.
This is an excellent look at modern Swedish society's so called melting pot in which one prime ingredient is acceptable in the stew; though this could be just about anywhere with few true international cities. The story line is driven by Kadir and Jonas who share commentary on Abbas. However, what makes the novel superior is the Tunisian-Swedish dialect (incredibly translated into English by Rachel Willson-Broyles) as readers will believe Abbas is a real person whose journey from frightened child to world accolades starts in Tunisia, goes to Sweden and ends in New York.
Harriet Klausner
Montecore Overview

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The Sonderberg Case Review

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The Sonderberg Case ReviewThis is Wiesel's first novel in awhile. I love his writing. This is a story within a story. It is a story of a man's life & a story of a criminal case the man covered as a theater critic. The case evolves from a simple case of murder to a case involving false identities & the Holocaust. The narrator also has an identity he can't remember, since he was a Jewish child who was sent away to be saved during the Holocaust. He remembers parents lost but forgotten. He remembers being unwanted by the family of the girl who saved him. He loves his Grandfather, who came from the family who adopted him. Who nurtured him & who loves him & where do his own wife & children fit into his life? Wiesel takes all these questions & molds them into this short & very readable novel.The Sonderberg Case Overview

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The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart (Borzoi Books) Review

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The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart (Borzoi Books) ReviewThe Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart, according to the back flap, is the "basis for an album that [Mathias] Malzieu wrote." I'd like to hear the album, because to be honest, I'm thinking his source material may have been better served in that medium. The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart isn't a bad book, but even for a novella there isn't much there and too much of it is either implied, assumed, or not earned; all of which wouldn't matter in an album but is disappointing in a book.
The main character, Jack, is given his odd heart at birth in 1874, when his freezes on the coldest day ever in Edinburgh. Dr. Madeline is the mid-wife who gives him the heart to keep him alive and who takes him from his mother, who gives him up to be adopted. Dr. Madeline warns Jack as he grows that his heart is too fragile for strong emotion and he should, therefore, never fall in love. Of course, that is just what Jack does, with a diminutive singer named Miss Accacia. His rival for her affection is the school bully and after a horrible fight, Jack is forced to flee Edinburgh, though it dovetails nicely with his intent to find Miss Accacia who has already left the city. Along the way he picks up a magician friend, finds work in an odd little amusement/fair area, and learns both the joys and the pains of loving with a heart, whether flesh or wood.
There is a nice sense of whimsy through especially the start of the book, a bit of Pinocchio, a bit of Tim Burton, and a strong sense of emotion at the start with his relationships with Dr. Madeline and several of her patients--an alcoholic named Arthur and a pair of prostitutes. And the inevitable love that the reader knows is coming weights heavy on the mind. But when it's introduced, in the form of Miss Accacia, it just never feels real. We're told repeatedly Jack is in love, but the reader never feels it. Beyond the direct dialogue, there just isn't any conveyance of the strength/depth necessary for us to care not just about the love but its impact. The bully compounds the problem as he allegedly turns against Jack because he too loves Miss Accacia, but once more, we neither see nor feel it. The rest of the book is hampered by that simple problem, and so while we dutifully follow Jack on his trek to find her again, and watch as he does and see how their relationship begins or ends, we honestly just don't care much. The reintroduction of the bully at the end makes matters even worse.
Stylistically, there are some wonderfully inventive images in the novella, though it suffers from an overuse of simile/metaphor that on occasion pile one atop the other and become a distraction, especially when they don't neatly work together, as is sometimes the case. This is especially true early on; Malzieu's restraint later in the book makes the good ones shine all the better.
In the end, the core image--the boy with a cuckoo-clock heart--is a wonderfully inventive and compelling one, while the underlying suspense of when will strike and what it's impact will be is equally so. But the execution of story beyond image and premise falls short of their promise. Though I still plan to check out the music--I can see Malzieu's imagery and impressionistic sense working much better in song/music, stripped of the need for straight narrative.The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart (Borzoi Books) Overview

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Bon voyage Level 3, Student Edition (Glencoe French) (French Edition) Review

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Bon voyage Level 3, Student Edition (Glencoe French) (French Edition) ReviewThis book has a solid foundation of grammar and vocabulary teaching, but it is a little too elementary for a French three book. The instructions are in English, and the activities are generally rewording the exact questions into answers. This suffices as a book to teach the language, but there are much better options for actually learning and developing the use of the language.Bon voyage Level 3, Student Edition (Glencoe French) (French Edition) OverviewBon voyage! Clearly the best choice!Bon voyage! (Schmitt and Brillié Lutz) is a comprehensive program that encourages meaningful, practical communication by immersing your students in the language and culture of the Francophone world. The text and its complementary resources help you meet the needs of every student in your diverse classroom.Bon voyage! provides your itinerary for success with exposure to the Francophone culture; clear expectations and goals; thematic, contextualized vocabulary; useful and thematically-linked structure; progressive practice; real-life conversation; cultural readings in the target language; recycling and review; and exquisite National Geographic Society panoramas of the Francophone world.

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Bon voyage Level 3 Student Edition (Glencoe French) (French Edition) Review

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Bon voyage Level 3 Student Edition (Glencoe French) (French Edition) ReviewI used this book over the past year in my French class, and it's pretty well done. Each chapter has vocabulary, grammar explanations, culture/French history, and French literature. Much of the literature is famous, like "Les Miserables," and some of it is lesser known, like "The Dernier Classe."
However, if you are teaching yourself French, do not use this book! While it does include grammar explanations, they are very superficial, and in more cases than not, you will need a teacher or native speaker to help you understand it.
However, this book does have a tendency to repeat some vocabulary over a span of several chapters which helps the words stick with you. Trust me, by the time you finish this book, you'll know how to describe a robbery or burglary in perfect French!
On a final note, this book is good because it's very modern. It includes modern "slang" phrases (not old and outdated ones that make you sound stupid). It also uses the euro as currency and has a more fun approach to material than some of the older books do. Overall, it's a pretty good French book.Bon voyage Level 3 Student Edition (Glencoe French) (French Edition) OverviewWith this text, teachers can select the material they present in depth based on the abilities, needs, and interests of their students.The text is divided into eight chapters that adhere to a very general theme as indicated in the chapter title—Les voyages, La santé, etc.Each chapter contains short lessons on Culture, Conversation, Language, Review Grammar, Journalism, Advanced Grammar, and Literature.

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Discovering French Nouveau (French Edition) Review

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Discovering French Nouveau (French Edition) ReviewThe shipper did a great job getting the book out to us promptly. This is a terrific way to buy textbooks. Thank you.Discovering French Nouveau (French Edition) Overview

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Bon voyage Level 3, Student Edition (Glencoe French) Review

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(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy Bon voyage Level 3, Student Edition (Glencoe French)? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on Bon voyage Level 3, Student Edition (Glencoe French). Check out the link below:

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Bon voyage Level 3, Student Edition (Glencoe French) ReviewThe Amazon price for this brand new textbook was much better than the online school's prices.Bon voyage Level 3, Student Edition (Glencoe French) OverviewBon voyage! Clearly the best choice!
Bon voyage! (Schmitt and Brillié Lutz) is a comprehensive program that encourages meaningful, practical communication by immersing your students in the language and culture of the Francophone world. The text and its complementary resources help you meet the needs of every student in your diverse classroom.
Bon voyage! provides your itinerary for success with exposure to the Francophone culture; clear expectations and goals; thematic, contextualized vocabulary; useful and thematically-linked structure; progressive practice; real-life conversation; cultural readings in the target language; recycling and review; and exquisite National Geographic Society panoramas of the Francophone world.

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L'Arbre Genereux (The Giving Tree), French Edition Review

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L'Arbre Genereux (The Giving Tree), French Edition Review
I purchased this book to slowly introduce poetry to my grandson, as the author is a favorite of is mother's.
Jackson is only 18 months old. His vocabulary French and English is beyond that of a two year old. Still, we are going to go very slowly. We have completed the first two pages and he now comprehends them.
I think that it will be best used and understood when he is about 9 and reading himself. For that reason I have put the book away for a few years.L'Arbre Genereux (The Giving Tree), French Edition Overview

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