Simon Lee, David Ricks: The Penguin French Reader

˝If you hope to speak a language like the natives, you have to know how it's used every day. Racine and Balzac are all very well for examinations: but what did they know about motor cars or supermarkets? The Penguin French Reader offers you a workaday sample of modern French - from books and newspapers, circular letters, theatre, programmes, brochures, anywhere. Funny, informative, provocative, or anecdotal, they represent the language a Frenchman is absorbing as the day goes by. They keep him abreast of politics, or sailing, or television, or what to do at the weekend. And they can give you the common idiom too. Companion readers in modern German, Italian, Spanish, and Russian are being prepared.˝