Flirting with French: How a Language Charmed Me, Seduced Me, and Nearly Broke My Heart
(Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)

William Alexander. (2014). Flirting with French: How a Language Charmed Me, Seduced Me, and Nearly Broke My Heart. Little, Brown and Company.

William Alexander. 2014. Flirting With French: How a Language Charmed Me, Seduced Me, and Nearly Broke My Heart. Little, Brown and Company.

William Alexander, Flirting With French: How a Language Charmed Me, Seduced Me, and Nearly Broke My Heart. Little, Brown and Company, 2014.

William Alexander. Flirting With French: How a Language Charmed Me, Seduced Me, and Nearly Broke My Heart. Little, Brown and Company, 2014.

OverDrive Product Record

images

• cover:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/0017-1/{69FEAD85-8B19-4CFD-A85C-0B74B32DDB48}IMG100.JPG
  • type: image/jpeg
• thumbnail:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/0017-1/{69FEAD85-8B19-4CFD-A85C-0B74B32DDB48}IMG200.JPG
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover150Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/0017-1/{69FEAD85-8B19-4CFD-A85C-0B74B32DDB48}IMG150.JPG
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover300Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/0017-1/{69FEAD85-8B19-4CFD-A85C-0B74B32DDB48}IMG400.JPG
  • type: image/jpeg

formats

1. • identifiers:
     1. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9781616204259
   • name: Adobe PDF eBook
   • id: ebook-pdf-adobe
2. • identifiers:
     1. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9781616204259
   • name: Adobe EPUB eBook
   • id: ebook-epub-adobe
3. • identifiers:
     1. • type: ASIN
        • value: B00KNCWLNY
   • name: Kindle Book
   • id: ebook-kindle
4. • identifiers:
     1. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9781616204259
   • name: OverDrive Read
   • id: ebook-overdrive

otherFormatIdentifiers

1. • type: ISBN
   • value: 9781616200206

mediaType

eBook

primaryCreator

• role: Author
• name: William Alexander

isOwnedByCollections

True

title

Flirting with French

dateAdded

2023-07-05T17:34:00Z

contentDetails

1. • href: https://link.overdrive.com?websiteID=426&titleID=1937189
   • type: text/html
   • account:
     • name: Wake County Public Libraries (NC)
     • id: 1893

sortTitle

Flirting with French How a Language Charmed Me Seduced Me and Nearly Broke My Heart

crossRefId

1937189

subtitle

How a Language Charmed Me, Seduced Me, and Nearly Broke My Heart

id

69FEAD85-8B19-4CFD-A85C-0B74B32DDB48

starRating

3.5

OverDrive MetaData

isPublicDomain

False

formats

1. • fileName: FlirtingwithFrench_1937189
   • partCount: 0
   • fileSize: 0
   • identifiers:
     1. • type: ASIN
        • value: B00KNCWLNY
   • name: Kindle Book
   • isReadAlong: False
   • id: ebook-kindle
   • onSaleDate: 9/16/2014
   • samples:
     1. • source: From the book
        • formatType: ebook-overdrive
        • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/flirting-with-french?.epub-sample.overdrive.com
2. • fileName: FlirtingwithFrench_9781616204259_1937189
   • partCount: 0
   • fileSize: 0
   • identifiers:
     1. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9781616204259
   • name: OverDrive Read
   • isReadAlong: False
   • id: ebook-overdrive
   • onSaleDate: 9/16/2014
   • samples:
     1. • source: From the book
        • formatType: ebook-overdrive
        • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/flirting-with-french?.epub-sample.overdrive.com

keywords

1. • value: retirement
2. • value: Biography
3. • value: Rosetta Stone
4. • value: fluency
5. • value: immigrant
6. • value: translation
7. • value: language
8. • value: Aging
9. • value: Neuroscience
10. • value: pen pal
11. • value: bilingual
12. • value: Autobiography
13. • value: cultural capital
14. • value: foreign language
15. • value: France
16. • value: french
17. • value: french culture
18. • value: Romance Languages
19. • value: linguistics
20. • value: Immersion
21. • value: Europe
22. • value: communication
23. • value: Travel
24. • value: grammar
25. • value: multilingual
26. • value: memoir
27. • value: ex pat
28. • value: francophile
29. • value: learning a language
30. • value: gendered language
31. • value: Academie francaise
32. • value: mental stimulation
33. • value: neural connections

creators

1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Alexander, William
   • bioText:

     William Alexander, the author of two critically acclaimed books, lives in New York's Hudson Valley. An IT director at a research institute by day, Alexander 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. 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.
     

   • name: William Alexander

imprint

Algonquin Books

publishDate

2014-09-16T00:00:00Z

isOwnedByCollections

True

title

Flirting with French

fullDescription

“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. There’s one small obstacle though: he doesn’t speak la langue française. In Flirting with French, Alexander sets out to conquer the language he loves. But will it love him back?
Alexander eats, breathes, and sleeps French (even conjugating in his dreams). He travels to France, where mistranslations send him bicycling off in all sorts of wrong directions, and he nearly drowns in an immersion class in Provence, where, faced with the riddle of masculine breasts, feminine beards, and a turkey cutlet of uncertain gender, he starts to wonder whether he should’ve taken up golf instead of French. While playing hooky from grammar lessons and memory techniques, Alexander reports on the riotous workings of the Académie française, the four-hundred-year-old institution charged with keeping the language pure; explores the science of human communication, learning why it’s harder for fifty-year-olds to learn a second language than it is for five-year-olds; and, frustrated with his progress, explores an IBM research lab, where he trades barbs with a futuristic hand-held translator.
Does he succeed in becoming fluent? Readers will be as surprised as Alexander is to discover that, in a fascinating twist, studying French may have had a far greater impact on his life than actually learning to speak it ever would.
“A blend of passion and neuroscience, this literary love affair offers surprise insights into the human brain and the benefits of learning a second language. Reading William Alexander’s book is akin to having an MRI of the soul.” —Laura Shaine Cunningham, author of Sleeping Arrangements
 
“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  

popularity

117

links

• self:
  • href: https://api.overdrive.com/v1/collections/L1BLQAAAA2a/products/69fead85-8b19-4cfd-a85c-0b74b32ddb48/metadata
  • type: application/vnd.overdrive.api+json
• shareInLibby:
  • href: https://link.overdrive.com/share?q=JY8dAAWUhr4
  • type: text/HTML

id

69fead85-8b19-4cfd-a85c-0b74b32ddb48

images

• cover:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/0017-1/{69FEAD85-8B19-4CFD-A85C-0B74B32DDB48}IMG100.JPG
  • type: image/jpeg
• thumbnail:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/0017-1/{69FEAD85-8B19-4CFD-A85C-0B74B32DDB48}IMG200.JPG
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover150Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/0017-1/{69FEAD85-8B19-4CFD-A85C-0B74B32DDB48}IMG150.JPG
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover300Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/0017-1/{69FEAD85-8B19-4CFD-A85C-0B74B32DDB48}IMG400.JPG
  • type: image/jpeg

isPublicPerformanceAllowed

False

languages

1. • code: en
   • name: English

subjects

1. • value: Biography & Autobiography
2. • value: Foreign Language Study
3. • value: Sociology
4. • value: Nonfiction

publishDateText

09/16/2014

otherFormatIdentifiers

1. • type: ISBN
   • value: 9781616200206

mediaType

eBook

shortDescription

“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. There’s one small obstacle though: he doesn’t speak la langue française. In Flirting with French, Alexander sets out to conquer the language he loves. But will it love him back?
Alexander eats, breathes, and sleeps French (even conjugating in his dreams). He travels to France, where mistranslations send him bicycling off in all sorts of wrong directions, and he nearly drowns in an immersion class in Provence, where, faced with the riddle of masculine breasts, feminine beards, and a turkey cutlet of uncertain gender, he starts to wonder whether he should’ve taken up golf instead of French. While playing hooky from grammar lessons and memory techniques, Alexander reports on...

sortTitle

Flirting with French How a Language Charmed Me Seduced Me and Nearly Broke My Heart

crossRefId

1937189

classifications

subtitle

How a Language Charmed Me, Seduced Me, and Nearly Broke My Heart

publisher

Little, Brown and Company

bisacCodes

1. • code: BIO026000
   • description: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Memoirs
2. • code: FOR008000
   • description: LANGUAGE STUDY / French
3. • code: SOC022000
   • description: Social Science / Popular Culture