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My great-grandmother Velma was not a rich person. She lived all her life in small communities in northern Pennsylvania, teaching in tiny schools, raising a bunch of kids, and running a small farm with my great-grandfather. Not fancy, but educated…
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Des Mots Gros et Petit
That title is “Words Big and Small,” if you were wondering, but I bet you figured it out. I posted on Instagram (@kristen_hg) about my adventures in century-old French, and an online friend in France offered to help me “with…
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Tools Old and New for Learning French
I’m using a book published in 1913 as my French refresher course, but I’m not against modern technology. I mean, I am creating blog posts as I learn, which are the height of internet fashion in 2019. I am writing…
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Diving into French c. 1913
I spent a couple of days on the intro of the Shorter French Course. It had the alphabet, a guide to accents, and an extensive pronunciation guide. It was a good reminder for how those nasal vowels are formed in…
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Velma: Twentieth-Century Student
I have spent more than a decade researching and writing and fact checking and editing, so you know I couldn’t just dive into French lessons from 1913 using my great-grandmother’s college textbook without looking some things up. Like, for example,…
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Shorter French Course
For every plan or project I start, three more pop up. Same with books — while I’m reading one, I buy five more. And Netflix — every time I log in to watch one thing, I add two to My…
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Digital vs Physical Media
How I’ve decided to consume media and support creators Last summer, City of Brass by S. A. Chakraborty was on sale for something like two bucks for Kindle. I had heard good things about the book, so I picked it…
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Launch Party for Skull and Sidecar!
If you’re in the Portland area this weekend and want something to do on Saturday afternoon, come pick up a paperback copy of my new novel, Skull and Sidecar. It’s historical fiction about women anthropologists set in 1926. There’s a man…