FLIRTING WITH FRENCH: HOW A LANGUAGE CHARMED ME, SEDUCED ME, AND NEARLY BROKE MY HEART

Book ID/图书代码： 00342514B71476

English Summary/英文概要： “A delightful and courageous tale and a romping good read. Voila!” —Mark Greenside, author of I’ll Never Be French (No Matter What I Do)

William Alexander is more than a Francophile. He wants to be French. To sip absinthe at the window of a dark café, a long scarf wrapped around his neck, a copy of Le Monde at hand. Among the things that have stood in his way of becoming French, though, is the fact that he can’t actually speak the language. So Alexander sets out to conquer the language he loves. Readers will find out if it loves him back.

Alexander eats, sleeps, and dreams French. (He even conjugates in his dreams.) And while he’s playing hooky from grammar lessons and memory techniques, he travels to France, delves into the colorful history of the French language and the science of linguistics, and even goes to Google to find out what’s taking them so long to perfect translation software. Finally, he contemplates how it can be that in French, breasts are masculine and beards are feminine, and tries to make sense of idioms like c’est la fin des haricots (it’s the end of the beans)—which means, appropriately enough, “it’s hopeless.” But ca ne fait rien! (No matter!) What Bill Alexander learns while not learning French is its own reward.

Chinese Summary/中文概要： “这部作品非常有趣，搞笑，却又充满勇气。推荐！”马克·格瑞赛德，《我再也不要当法国人了》作者

威廉·亚历桑德拉不止是一位法国狂热爱好者，他想要变成法国人。在昏暗的咖啡馆窗边吮吸苦艾酒，脖子上围着长长的围巾，手里拿着份《世界报》的拷贝件。但有很多事情阻碍着他成为一个法国人，其中有一条就是——他不会说法语。所以亚历桑德拉准备攻克下他喜爱的语言。他的这份法国之爱最后有没有回报他呢？

亚历桑德拉吃饭、睡觉，哪怕做梦都在想着法语。他后来缺席了语法课和记忆训练课，前往法国，开始研究法语的多彩历史和语言学的奥秘，还用谷歌翻译学习。最后，他开始明白法语是种复杂的语言，例如胸部是阳性词，而胡子是阴性词。亚历桑德拉还试图搞明白一些法国俚语的含义，例如“豆子的尽头”的意思是“没希望了”。没关系，亚历桑德拉明白了不学法语真是种奖励啊。(XAT)

Awards/获奖情况：“《与法语调情》非常搞笑，又很感人，结局出人意料。在这段学习法语的旅程中，威廉·亚历桑德拉证明学习新的语言本身就是一种挑战，有许多意想不到的挑战、令人惊喜的突破，还有许多快乐。”——茱莉亚·巴罗，《六千万的法国人不会错》作者

“Flirting with French is hilarious and touching, all the way to the surprise ending. In this ’travelogue’ about learning French, William Alexander proves that learning a new language is an adventure of its own--with all the unexpected obstacles, surprising breakthroughs and moments of sublime pleasure traveling brings.” —Julie Barlow, author of Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong

About the Author/作者介绍： 威廉·亚历桑德拉，著有两本颇具好评的作品，现居于纽约哈德逊山谷。威廉目前是研究所的信息科技主任，他在53岁的时候出版了自己的处女作，一部有关园艺的作品《64美元的番茄》。他的第二部作品《52片面包》记叙了他为了烤出一片完美的面包而付出的努力，他前往偏远的摩洛哥的公共区域以及法国的修道院收集食材，还在自家的后院种植加工小麦。《波士顿全球报》称威廉“疯狂的娱乐”，《纽约时代报》称“他的时机和配送是毫无瑕疵的”，《明尼阿波利斯星坛报》则称“如果世界没有了威廉，就会少了一份乐趣”。威廉入围了2006年鹅毛笔奖，后又凭借刊登在《美味》杂志中的有关面包的文章获得了伯特格林奖。从作品中，我们可以看出威廉总徘徊在热情和痴迷的边缘。他经常出现在美国公共广播电台的早间板块，华盛顿的国家图书节日板块，并经常向《纽约时代报》供稿，他指出圣诞树会点燃他的起居室，也不利于环保。在《与法语调情》中，他用自己的写作天赋描绘了一件他可能没什么天赋的事情，说一口流利的法语，这实在太难了。

William Alexander, the author of two critically acclaimed books, lives in New York’s Hudson Valley. By day the IT director at a research institute, he made his professional writing debut at the age of fifty-three with a national bestseller about gardening, The $64 Tomato. His second book, 52 Loaves, chronicled his quest to bake the perfect loaf of bread, a journey that took him to such far-flung places as a communal oven in Morocco and an abbey in France, as well as into his own backyard to grow, thresh, and winnow wheat. The Boston Globe called Alexander "wildly entertaining," the New York Times raved that "his timing and his delivery are flawless," and the Minneapolis Star Tribune observed that "the world would be a less interesting place without the William Alexanders who walk among us." A 2006 Quill Book Awards finalist, Alexander won a Bert Greene Award from the IACP for his article on bread, published in Saveur magazine. A passion bordering on obsession unifies all his writing. He has appeared on NPR’s Morning Edition and at the National Book Festival in Washington DC and is a frequent contributor to the New York Times op-ed pages, where he has opined on such issues as the Christmas tree threatening to ignite his living room and the difficulties of being organic. Now, in Flirting with French, he turns his considerable writing talents to his perhaps less considerable skills: becoming fluent in the beautiful but maddeningly illogical French language.

Format:TRADE PAPERBACK

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