What the French call l'Âge classique (from late 16th to early 18th centuries) does have the advantage of "linguistic purity": the vocabulary is "soutenu" and restricted (Roland Barthes called Racine "l’homme aux deux mille mots") so knowing the few thousand Latinate words that are used in the literary registers of English gets you a long way. On the flip side, it's highly stylized and many of the words are used in ways that are subtly different from contemporary French, so I wouldn't focus on that era unless you want to be a scholar of French classicism or something.

I would avoid the 19th century: everyone thinks they're going to enjoy Madame Bovary or the Three Musketeers but it's full of lengthy descriptions of stuff like taverns and horses and chapels where you'll have to look up 5 words in every sentence. Impractical.

Many of the people I know who made the biggest progress in French started by reading plenty of nonfiction: it's just simpler than literary fiction and you can get it from wherever. From news agencies on Twitter to biographies of celebrities you like. Someone I know took herself to a new level by reading on her phone a French translation of an English-language Cure biography she found as an ebook (on Google's book app, whatever it's called) cause she was a Cure fan and knew a lot about them already, so she could figure out a lot from context as opposed to looking up every single word she didn't know.

Can't seem to get to page 746. Making a post to see if it's me or the internet.

Hilarious.

This is what I am reading right now. It's very interesting. I am not really afraid of death. If I died today I would have no regrets. But love the life that I have.

https://www.musicbanter.com/data:ima...hO/FjdCXOFH//Z

.

V. by Thomas Pynchon

*passes out in exhaustion*

V/5, this **** is intense.

Siddhartha - Damn I wish I read this when I was like, 14. Still really rad though. Excellent, simplistic prose filled with neat philosophical meanderings and beautiful descriptive passages about rebirth n ****. Bit of orientalizing going on but whatcha gonna do, it was the 20s and all. 4/5

Next: Das Glasperlenspiel!

This book (along with Suzuki’s „The Introduction to Zen Buddhism”) quite literally saved me from sinking into deep depression. Or worst.

When living my first few months in Paris, every time I felt like killing myself, every time I was starting to cry out loud in public, or when any other weird and unpleasant **** was happening to me, I’d pick up Siddhartha, and Hesse’s wisdom, along with the impossibly soothing and poetic way it’s written would get me out of my misery.

This might be the single most important book in my life.

As soon as I returned to Poland I’ve bought a copy for all of my friends.
It resulted in pretty much all of them becoming Hesse fanatics, and many interesting conversations.



The only books by Hesse I don’t enjoy are the german-small-town-lifestyle stuff he liked to write from time to time for whatever reason.

Demian, Siddhartha, Journey to the East, Steppenwolf, The Glass Bead Game, Fables, The Book of Dreams are all among my favourites though

I agree (tho I didn’t have the existential crisis you were having).
That’s why I recommended Das Glasperlenspiel as the next book.
Suzuki moved me during those days too.
Stockhausen and I would talk about Hesse on occasion.
He was a big fan - especially when he was young.