Welcome to Litsy!

She goes on to write: We think of foreign languages as extremely hard to learn, but we're incensed when immigrants don't speak English perfectly.

Here's a little bit of motivation for anyone who is trying to learn a foreign language, but is frustrated with their progress and wants to quit--if you do, you're no better than Hitler. (You're welcome).

I was always curious about this.

I kept telling waiters I was dead--je suis finie--when I meant to say that I had finished my salad.

I loved this book!
You need to at least have some notions in French in order to get the jokes and/or get why they are funny, but it depicts the struggle of living in a foreign country pretty well (specially when you don't speak the local language!).
(Finished on 03/2020)

I always loved Bonnie Tyler's voice. I'm not familiar with this album, I'll have to go searching on ebay.

#WanderingJune #LostInFrance @cinfhen @BarbaraBB

The first half is a brilliant, accurate and amusing anecdote about expat life in Switzerland. The second is a dry yet informative history of the French language....with some memoirs thrown in for good measure. Took me forever to finish it because the end was so dry.

Expat life in Switzerland.....in a nutshell 😍🇨🇭😂

Combines a personal narrative about an American living in Switzerland with her French husband with reflections and factual tidbits about bilingualism and xenophobia. It works.

Fun words! 💚 #useful #kummerspeck

Loved this book! I found it to be much more about language than relationships, despite its packaging! I was chuckling every few pages and learning something just as often.

More #dinerreading! So glad this book is #overdue, which prompted me to actually read it. Loving it! #library #SFPL #coffee

I'm enjoying this book so much! Tons of great language information 💚🤓

Mostly about linguistics (?) and languages. Audio got tedious and uninteresting with no plot to follow just chopped up strands of story .⭐️⭐️

I enjoyed parts of this book & found others extremely irritating. Linguistically, there were both over- & under-explanations. On the whole, the entire book needed a much firmer hand in the editing department- it skips around between subjects & timelines & is a little too focused on navel-gazing for my taste, even for a memoir. I did, however, enjoy the parts that dealt more directly with developing an identity & relationships in a second language.

Seems like a good pairing! 💜❤️💜

#TBRtemptation post! A hilarious and endearing memoir with high ratings. Lauren moved to London in her early 30s, and fell in love with Olivier, a Frenchman. The fact that they speak 2 different languages exacerbated when they moved to francophone Geneva. Determined to communicate better, she learns French, with hilarious effect. For example, she tells her mother-in-law she's given birth to a coffee machine. 😂👏🏻 #blameLitsy #blameMrBook 😎

In-flight reading! ✈️

Was going to try reading something festive but pulled this out instead. It's sucked me right in.

I usually love books about France/French but this one just didn't grab. Got half way through but can't go on.

A great memoir for those who love language. I could relate to the feeling of not fitting in where you live. The audio of this book didn't work for me - I didn't enjoy it until I switched to print.

Part of today's BookMail also received the novelThe Patriots by Sana Krasikov both look fantastic,

Chilly first night of October = perfect night for reading in bed 🇫🇷📚🍁#wheninfrench

This book started out as a memoir about Collins attempting to learn French after marrying a Frenchman and moving to France. Then it became a history of the French language. Then back to memoir. This switching back and forth continued throughout. While both the memoir and the history were interesting, she needed to focus on one aspect or the other so we could get a full story, rather than just snippets of two different ideas.

This book sounds SO right up my alley! A memoir about an expat in England who falls in love with a Frenchman and is trying to learn the language? Sign me up.

I always feel so important when I get a new ARC in the mail.

I am LOVING this so far. It broke me out of my reading lull completely - it is funny, sweet, and utterly charming.

The best memoirs are just as much histories as they are stories of people. Collins explores the languages of French and English, and the the transition of growing up in America to living in Europe. Fantastic non-fiction from a longtime New Yorker staff writer.