Words in a French Life: Lessons in Love and Language from the South of France

A follower of Kristin's blog, I bought her book as soon as it came out, so I can't imagine why it took me this long to review it!

Espinasse writes with (frequently self-deprecating) wit, painting vignettes of her everyday life that charm, entertain, and teach you a few words of French as well.

To the people who miss the photographs, my guess, as someone in the business, is that they were shot with an amateur camera or shot at deliberately lower resolution for the Web (small files open faster) and so were not high enough quality -- as in resolution -- for professional printing. Something that looks gorgeous at 92 ppi or thereabouts on a computer screen can't be printed on a professional press.

But Espinasse has the words to give colorful images of her environment and life, so don't pass the book up just because the pictures aren't there. All the more reason to visit her blog to see the photographs!

This book is a lot of fun. As you read about the life in France, you can't help but pick up a word or two of French with each chapter you read.

I enjoyed this book so much, I'm getting another copy for my daughter to take on vacation. It was interesting to learn not only about life in France but about Kristin as she adjusts to her life there. She observes herself as acutely and entertainingly as she does her new home. I found the book while browsing the travel section, I'd never heard of her blog before this - the reviewer below me is right, she's got a terrific blog with beautiful photos, but I think he's way off about the book. I found it worked both as a story read straight through, which gives a fascinating and satisfying total picture, or as vignettes read as separate chunks.

I first found out about Kristin's writing from her "word a day" emails. It was a natural progression to get her book and it is thoroughly charming cover to cover. This is the book that I pick up in between my trips to France to remind myself of all the things I love about the country and its people.

If you've never been to France, read it and you'll be on the next plane. If you've been to France, read it and you'll be returning again soon.

I hope Kristin soon publishes another volume!

The value of this charming and instructive book by a natural writer and observer of the (French) social scene is that it makes picking up new vocabulary easy because you remember the lovely stories in which they were packaged.

This is part soap opera, part cultural exchange, part charming honesty, part ingenuousness, and, overall, a very natural and entertaining way to enhance one's French vocabulary at the same time one gains an understanding of the culture that comes along with that language.

It is delightful to be a fly on the wall during the culture shock of a French major from the American Southwest finding love and community in La France.

I have been a reader of her blog for a while and benefited from that, but it is a different, and better, experience to read some of her best columns in book form, which, by the way, suggests in its design the south of France, a Mediterranean touch stylewise. It's a handsome dustcover.

This unique book will have you learning French while chuckling at her account of getting 'hung up' on entering the church for her wedding. Such refreshing candor! You'll love this book.

Addenda:

Kristin's web columns are so good I wondered how I could access as many as possible of her previous work. Voila! As a Google mail holder, I found could go to one of their services called Google Reader which allows one to add RSS (really simple syndication) feeds to that page and access them in a convenient fashion (summary or listing). When I added the URL for her webpage, Google went out, got the RSS and placed it on a list to the left of the page. I found the LIST format most useful for scrolling backwards in time more than a year to see all her French Words on which I could click to get the original page with all her vocabulary suggestions and her delightful stories.

Her genius is that she places new French vocablulary gently amongst a story, otherwise in English, that is so interesting that one wants to read it to the end, and then look over the associated words and phrases.

In effect, one learns new French words from the context in which they are placed in the English language story. Enormously clever and effective. It resembles the way we learn vocabulary in our own language: from context.