Online French Book Club
Learn French by reading literature
An online book club for French learners: Read books and discuss in French
Join the book club
The group meets online every week.
Read & discuss books in French
Reading provides you with a plethora of benefits.
When you read, you can spend the time to really break down and internalize grammar, vocabulary and better understand the structure of phrases.
Online French Book Club: When and where?
The calls are exclusively online.
Choose your group among many available schedules.
We read a new book every month.
6 French learners per group.
$25 covers one month class for 1 person and includes:
- Pre-call preparation: Before every call, I will submit specific questions to help you understand all the elements that the reading group will discuss.
- A new part each week: I will divide our book into different parts, each part corresponding to 1 week.
- 1-hour call each week: This is the time when the group meets online to discuss with me and other readers on Zoom.
- Follow-up emails
- Access to the analysis of books we’ve read
The places are limited!
Online Conversations
Why reading is important to learn French?
Reading has many advantages to improve your French learning:
Books contain a richer language.
Average speakers don’t spend as much time choosing their words as writers do. The written words are more nuanced than the spoken words. Writers consider their words more carefully than a native speaker talking with friends.
Books help you get more immersed in the language.
You just have to grab a book. Do that and you’ll be able to travel through space and time. You don’t have to travel to far away to learn a language.
Read if you want to be a good communicator.
People who are good communicators have a large vocabulary that they usually acquire by reading. They draw the appropriate vocabulary the moment they need it.
Build a routine and go at your own pace.
You can take the time to read the book and understand the words and the story.
How to read in French
Read what you enjoy.
Read what is challenging.
Set yourself short-term targets.
Keep a record of your achievements and celebrate them.
Things you need to know about our reading group
The calls are exclusively online. We read a new book every month.
Choose your group :
- every Tuesday at 1pm (Paris time) – Intermediates
- every Thursday at 3pm (Paris time) – Intermediates
- every Friday at 2pm (Paris time) – Intermediates
- every Saturday at 7pm (Paris time) – beginners
- every Monday at 9am (Paris time) – Intermediates
$25 covers one month class for 1 person and includes:
- You’ll receive the pre-call preparation items
- We read and discuss a new part each week
- We meet online for a 1-hour call each week
- We exchange after the call with follow-up emails
- Access to the analysis of books we’ve read
What will we read together?
October
Here’s the book I chose: L’amant by Marguerite Duras
An international best-seller with more than one million copies in print and a winner of France’s Prix Goncourt, The Loverhas been acclaimed by critics all over the world since its first publication in 1984.
Set in the prewar Indochina of Marguerite Duras’s childhood, this is the haunting tale of a tumultuous affair between an adolescent French girl and her Chinese lover. In spare yet luminous prose, Duras evokes life on the margins of Saigon in the waning days of France’s colonial empire, and its representation in the passionate relationship between two unforgettable outcasts.
September
Here’s the book I chose: La Petite Fille de Monsieur Linh de Philippe Claudel.
Traumatized by memories of his war-ravaged country, and with his son and daughter-in-law dead, Monsieur Linh travels to a foreign land to bring the child in his arms to safety. The other refugees in the detention centre are unsure how to help the old man; his caseworkers are compassionate, but overworked. Monsieur Linh struggles beneath the weight of his sorrow, and becomes increasingly bewildered and isolated in this unfamiliar, fast-moving town. And then he encounters Monsieur Bark. They do not speak each other’s language, but Monsieur Bark is sympathetic to the foreigner’s need to care for the child. Recently widowed and equally alone, he is eager to talk, and Monsieur Linh knows how to listen. The two men share their solitude, and find friendship in an unlikely dialogue between two very different cultures.
Monsieur Linh and His Child is a remarkable novel with an extraordinary twist, a subtle portrait of friendship and a dialogue between two cultures.
July
Here’s the book I chose: Marius de Marcel Pagnol.
His three comedies—Marius (1929), Fanny (1931), and César (1936), known as the Marseille trilogy—deal with the lives of a Marseille fishmonger, Fanny, her lover Marius who goes off to sea, César the father, and his friend Panisse. The salty language of the people and Pagnol’s ability to capture the atmosphere of the port at Marseille made the plays universally appealing, and the films made from them influenced the later Neorealists. The plays also inspired the Broadway musical Fanny, which was later adopted into a motion picture.
June
Here’s the book I chose: Terre des hommes de Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The National Book Award-winning autobiographical book about the wonder of flying from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of the beloved children’s classic The Little Prince.
A National Geographic Top Ten Adventure Book of All Time
Recipient of the Grand Prix of the Académie Française, Wind, Sand and Stars captures the grandeur, danger, and isolation of flight. Its exciting account of air adventure, combined with lyrical prose and the spirit of a philosopher, makes it one of the most popular works ever written about flying.
May
Here’s the book I chose: Bonjour tristesse de Françoise Sagan
“A sensational 1954 French novel that has become a contemporary classic.
Endearing, self-absorbed, seventeen-year-old Cécile is the very essence of untroubled amorality. Freed from the stifling constraints of boarding school, she joins her father—a handsome, still-young widower with a wandering eye—for a carefree, two-month summer vacation in a beautiful villa outside of Paris with his latest mistress, Elsa. Cécile cherishes the free-spirited moments she and her father share, while plotting her own sexual adventures with a “tall and almost beautiful” law student. But the arrival of her late mother’s best friend, Anne, intrudes upon a young girl’s pleasures. And when a relationship begins to develop between the adults, Cécile and her lover set in motion a plan to keep them apart…with tragic, unexpected consequences.
The internationally beloved story of a precocious teenager’s attempts to understand and control the world around her, Françoise Sagan’s Bonjour Tristesse is a beautifully composed, wonderfully ambiguous celebration of sexual liberation, at once sympathetic and powerfully unsparing.”
French Beginners & intermediates
October
Here’s the book I chose: Lancelot by Brigitte Faucard-Martinez (niveau A1)
Do you have a question?
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Online French Book Club
If you're wondering...
Is this online French Book Club right for you?
WHO THIS CLUB IS FOR
- The Club is suitable for learners with an intermediate or advanced level of French
- The group of Saturday’s 7pm is best for beginners and intermediates
- Learners who want to improve their French level
- Learners who are ready to take the time to read
- Learners who are interested in getting feedback and support
WHO THIS IS NOT FOR
- Learners who don’t want to put in the time needed to read
Our programs to learn French
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French Reading Club FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
There are 2 groups : intermediates + and beginners +. Send an email if you need help to choose the right group.
You need four things: a stable internet connection, a computer, the book of the month and Zoom, the free video conferencing tool.
You will have to order the book yourself early enough to make sure you receive it before our first class.
Yes, your book will be only in French. And we’ll only speak French during our calls.
Please send me an email to provide me with your availabilities.
