Some wise and learned person said that one of the best ways to learn a language better was to read in the said language. So, when I was learning French, I dutifully started to read novels in French.

It was okay for the language, but French writers seem to have a love for stories that end badly. The hero dies or it doesn’t all work out at the end. Ambiguity rules.

I had a hard time with that because I’m a big fan of happy endings. I don’t spend hours reading a book in order to have more questions at the end than at the beginning.

Give me an old Western any day. There’s a good guy, a bad guy and a pretty girl. You got that? The black hat and the white hat spend the whole film fighting, then at the end the good guy plugs the bad guy, takes the pretty girl by the hand, they climb on their horses and they ride off towards the setting sun to live happily ever after.

It’s not complicated. Continue reading →