French teachers - recommendations for novels to resurrect my French!

[RockingMyFiftiesNot]

(I thought I'd already posted this and had received no responses, tried to find my thread to bump but seems I may not have completed the post....apologies if this is a repeat...)

I have A level French but haven't used it for years. Would like to read some books but my A level Camus and Balzac are beyond me. I did pick up a French Mills and Boon a few years ago which I managed ok but fairly simple stuff!
What books (fiction preferably) would you recommend to GCSE students? I think I have retained that level of passive knowledge.
We've also been watching the Last Wave, I find it very hard to hear the French words but it's getting a little easier. Other suggestions for subtitled TV series or films I would be able to get on iPlayer/Netflix/prime or cheaply from eBay etc also welcome.
Thank you

Amelie Nothomb is quite easy, try Stupeur et tremblements. Or some easy Beach reading like MArc Levy or Michel Busso.

There are some great French detective boxed sets on iplayer and netflux. La Mante on Netflix was excellent.
If you go to audio settings on netflix films you can change a lot to French too.

We've just finished Marseille on Netflix which I enjoyed.

Also, check out Paul Taylor's stand up on YouTube. He is bilingual and his shows are half in each language. Very funny on cultural differences etc.

I started out by watching Netflix in French I kids programmes such as peppa pig!! 😂

I find Marcel Pagnol fairly easy to read. Not too long and vocabulary isn't complicated.

Start with Jean de Florette .. if you've already seen the film makes it easier to understand the context.

I’m just reading some Delphine de Vigan and it’s very easy going, probably a good place to start.

Le Petit Prince. A classic and probably manageable.

In the same boat, I used to be almost bilingual, now when I’m in France everyone assumes I haven’t understood:/ The disappearance on the bbc is good for some escapism, agree with stupeur et tremblements.

For novels, I think I really good starting point is to read the French translation nod a book you already know really well. So when I was studying French, to give myself a break from Camus or Flaubert, I would turn to my collection of Harry Potter, Roald Dahl, Adrian Mole or Goosebumps books. These were all books I had read a lot as a teenager and so knew very well. That meant that I could work out words like ‘lightening scar’ or ‘toad’ without using a dictionary. 🥰. This is what I recommend to my keen GCSE pupils.

Most books by Eric Emmanuel Schmitt are very accessible, particularly Oscar et la dame rose (but be prepared to cry buckets!). All of his cycle de l'invisible are shortish and great reads. I've taught several of them to my A level students and they've found them very readable

I just read normal fiction but in French - although admittedly I usually stock up when we go to France, so I don't know how easy it is to get hold of them in the UK.

Thank you for the suggestions. I think my vocabulary is too weak now just to read the French translation of books or classics, and it would frustrate me to keep stopping to look up vocabulary. So I thought French teachers might know which books they would recommend to GCSE students as I would say I am about that level.

I always loved to read Asterix because it’s good fun and definitely doable if you have GCSE level 😊

Actually I started out with Tintin now I come to think of it!

In all honesty, if you think your French isn't up to reading translations, then your best bet will be children's books or things like Asterix and Tintin. My GCSE students would rarely have been capable of reading proper French novels, not even for children. And looking at what my children read (8 and 9, living in France), people with rusty French would struggle. Comics are your friends. Small doses of vocabulary and lots of help from pictures for the context. Tintin in particular is actually text dense for a comic.

If Tintin and Asterix aren't your thing, let me know what genres you like to read and I can point you in the right direction.

Once you've brushed up the vocab a bit and refreshed the grammar (just by reading) you should be able to move on pretty quickly.

Also watch series with the subtitles in French, not English. It will help train your ear again. Just pause to look up anything that's really problematic. If you think you've got the gist, just go with it.

Thank you all. @FingonTheValiant good idea re French subtitles and agree re children's books. We have a charity shop locally which focuses on books, went in yesterday to look for somethingEnglish to read over the weekend. They had a shelf of foreign language books which I'd not noticed before - and I managed to find 2 French children's books 'livre de poche jeunesse' - one from 8-9'years (le castor Grogh et sa tribu' and one from 12 'La ceinture empoossonnee'. So old that the price label says 10 Francs but hey! Will give them a go. It might be a confidence thing - I can probably remember more than I think but I spent a lot of time in Germany so 'unlearnt' a lot of French. I'll give these two a go and see how I get on.
Thanks again