Citoyen de la Galaxie by Robert A. Heinlein (original publication 1957, this French edition 2011)
Back in August, I quoted a passage from Robert Heinlein's Citizen of the Galaxy. Inspired by this, and a good deal available for the Kindle version, I decided to reread it—in French.
It was a surprisingly delightful experience.
I had three years of mediocre French classes in high school, and have been working very casually, though consistently, with DuoLingo since I was a beta tester for them back in 2012. I have many frustrations with DuoLingo, but this week I discovered that it has actually given me a lot of French vocabulary and a pretty good feel for grammatical structures. I really enjoyed reading Citoyen de la Galaxie.
Naturally I didn't read it as quickly as the English version, but I surprised myself. My goal had been to work my way through ten pages per day. Instead, I was so caught up in the story that I finished it in just about a week.
It must be admitted that I was not a stranger to the story, which helped enormously. I first read Citizen of the Galaxy when I was in elementary school, and I've reread it several times since. How many times I have no idea, but I know that I last read it in 2017—before that, I don't know, except that it was earlier than 2010, when I began keeping track of the books I read. As I read the French, I was astonished to find the words of the English version coming back to me. Between that, the DuoLingo vocabulary, and occasional help from the Kindle French-English dictionary available at a touch, the reading was easy enough to keep me going.
I would not at all expect the same ease with an unfamiliar book. But the experience was exciting, especially since I would often find myself actually thinking in French for a few minutes after a session of reading.
