
If only Georges Simenon had been a bit more like Maigret - lermontov
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/08/if-only-georges-simenon-had-been-a-bit-more-like-maigret/
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sprafa
I love these books. I can buy them in Portugal for 50p and piece and they
phenomenal covers. French police stories are fantastic because everything
revolves around sex; which speaks to me as more realistic than American det
novels (often about conspiracy theories, threats from other countries or from
powerful men - to be fair some of them are quite frank about sex too) and
British novels (which don’t seem to mention sex at all or when they do, it’s
almost in passing and with no relevance to the story).

I find that the French frankness about sex leads to better crime novels that
speak more about reality to me. I get the impression that the kind of crime
novels each country has really speaks to their character (or intended
character - I think the British are as horny as any other people, but they are
bad at talking and thinking about sex).

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nferracin
> I can buy them in Portugal for 50p

Can I ask you where? Also, in French of Portuguese? Moving to Portugal in 2020
and would love to know where to find books for cheap!

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sprafa
You can find French books in some places, but you can find cheap Portuguese
books virtually anywhere, but particularly so in Porto, close to where I live.

We call local/old/second hand bookshops “alfarrabistas” and they are very
common around the country. Some have closed with the savage turistification
that’s hit the country, but most are still around for now.

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nferracin
Do you have any favorite you feel like suggesting? I've been there several
times but never noticed them and even my Portuguese partner wouldn't know
where to find one after many years living abroad.

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sprafa
Where? In Porto or Lisbon?

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nferracin
Both are fine :)

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pvaldes
Maigret is much better in French. For such kind of "cheap" unpretentious
books, the author is pretty astute and solid building the narrative. There is
a lot of "European soul" and specially "French soul" distilled in the books.

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lrc
I lived in France for a few years and wanted to become fluent in the language.
One part of my strategy was just to try to brute-force through some novels
with the aid of a dictionary and a conjugation chart. I started with _Les
Trois Mousquetaires_ but found the diction too difficult to slog through. I
made it through _Le Petit Prince_, but I really clicked with Simenon's
detective novels. Since it was a familiar, modern form, it was easier for my
brain to fill in the blanks through context. The dialogue, especially, was
realistic and quite to the point ("Ici c'est moi qui pose les questions"
sticks in my mind).

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nosianu
I did something similar as part of learning English. For me the best author
for this purpose was Stephen King (not that I spent much time searching, just
random trial and error; I don't even like horror stories). After mastering
Stephen King I moved on to J. R. R. Tolkien. For the first fifty pages or so
of The Lord of The Rings I had to look up words pretty much one for every
other line of text.

It was amazing to see how different authors, although both very good and well-
known, use language so very differently, and use quite different sets of words
and of very different sizes. It's not like Stephen King writes children's
books, or that his stories are any more simple than LOTR. It's just like with
code: You have people using a small(er) subset of a language but express
similarly complex ideas (algorithms), while others enjoy using less commonly
used language features. Both methods can get the job done beautifully in the
right hands. One has the advantage of being more (easily) accessible (and to a
larger amount of readers) though.

By the way, my next level in "word acquisition" came through reading The
Economist and a few other magazines of similarly exalted vocabulary. Again I
had to look up at least ten words per article when I started.

Which reminds me: Is there a service that manages to categorize books by
looking at the set of words they contain (and possibly sentence
structure/grammar)? Might be quite useful as a niche service for foreigners
learning a language. The obvious and simple answer is to sort by intended
audience (e.g. books for children and young people vs. _sciency_ books), but
as my Stephen King vs Tolkien example shows, the overall level does not have
to be different at all just because one uses a smaller set of words.

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B1FF_PSUVM
> categorize books by looking at the set of words they contain

Sometimes books are tagged with a "vocabulary level" or "reading level". A
search on those pops up some possible answers, e.g.
[https://library.austintexas.libanswers.com/faq/40667](https://library.austintexas.libanswers.com/faq/40667)

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eatonphil
I read mostly non fiction but mystery novels are the one fiction genre I never
mind reading. I read it like a (roundabout) lesson on the character of a time
and place. I'd previously read London's Sherlock, Belgium's Poirot (written by
the English Agatha Christie), LA's Philip Marlowe and France's Lupin (good
reads, but the translations are poor quality).

I picked up Pietr the Latvian recently in a search for more Continental novels
in the 18th and 19th century. I've started another Maigret novel since.
Georges Simenon is a pretty incredible author given his serial output.
Likewise the translators mentioned in the article did excellent work. I highly
recommend these translated Maigret novels for both the plot and the
wordsmithing.

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toyg
Can I humbly suggest a few more “detectives with literary ambitions” you may
or may not know already?

Manuel Vázquez Montalbán’s _Pepe Carvalho_ is a survivor of Franco’s purges,
solving crimes and describing recipes in late-1980s Barcelona. (Spanish)

Andrea Camilleri’s _Salvo Montalbano_ brings justice to the decadent and
complicated Sicilian society of today. (Italian)

Both spawned several books, and have been translated to most languages at some
point or another. Both draw a lot from Simenon, but have their distinctive
styles (Camilleri in the Italian original uses a pidgin dialect that calls to
Gadda and Joyce; and MVM is obsessed with food and politics).

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JBlue42
Thank for the suggestions.

I also keep my eye on NYRB Classics Suspense/Crime offerings as they have a
pretty good international selection (some Simenon included):

[https://www.nyrb.com/collections/classics/suspense-
crime](https://www.nyrb.com/collections/classics/suspense-crime)

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brosinante
That's an ad for the new release of the translations, imitating an article.
Read Monsieur Monde Vanishes instead if you want to read some Simenon, it's a
better book.

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pygy_
The new translations are indeed mentioned in passing, but the piece is a good
introduction for people who don't know the author.

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convFixb
Quite. I suspect many, like myself, mainly know Maigret from the television
series starring Rowan Atkinson (yes!).

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toyg
Maigret is probably second only to Poirot and Holmes for number of tv
adaptations. In Italy we had one in the mid-60’s that was very good, if a bit
theatrical.

