les livres.....

ok, so....in searching for a book to read.....i surveyed the downstairs bedroom collection.....offlimits under most circumstances, but the owner is unavailable for the next 8 weeks and i need something to read......and the only book i was vaguely interested in picking up was maigret a new york, by georges simenon...en francais....a book that i bought for him, mostly because i found it interesting rather than because he was keen to read my favorite detective novels in the language in which the series had been published...i cannot read french, yet there was a dictionary on the shelf near the book in question....surely a sign? right?.......the dictionary is circa 1962....which means it is so undesirable a reference volume as to still be on the shelf.......but i am making do....with a bit of help from babelfish......some terms are still not clear....such as s'etaient........babelfish explains it by repeating the term..as if it is self-explanatory....zut alors......so far i am on page 2....an maigret, the detective, is arriving on a ship at the port of new york...it is his first sea voyage, and he is either drunk or seasick or both.....as he has guzzled a bottle (or part of a bottle) of marc his wife sent along in his luggage....and he was smoking his pipe on the deck in his pajamas underneath his overcoat when he almost runs into a colleague named jean.......and it is in the middle of the night....and it is either raining or drizzling.......i say so far so good.........