French Grammar and Usage

Rating:
Summary: God bless this book
Review: I'm glad I've finally a decent grammar book for French. It's an extremely helpful reference. The earlier review mentioned that the cover is hideous but I have to say, the cover is *not* a problem.

There are notes on the differences between "written" and "spoken" French. Overall, this is a great book. Easy to use. Even if you're a complete beginner, you shouldn't have a problem.

Rating:
Summary: the best book i've yet to find on the french language
Review: Simply put, this really is the very best book on French I've ever come across, so much so that I bought it on the spot, which is something I very rarely do. It is well-organized, has wonderful examples, and has a particularly good section on adverbs. Although most grammars are simply grammars, I think this is a wonderful book for vocabulary expansion because of all the examples provided, and for the most part translations are provided for both phrases and individual words. It also has a very good index, which is always good in a book, especially so thorough a book. One of the best and most easily-overlooked conveniences is that the formal or colloquial usages are noted right alongside the rest rather than being put in seperate formal or colloquial chapters which would complicate things too much for the student.

I'm not sure how the beginning student would find this book though, but I think I would've liked to have it when I first started out. Perhaps some pronunciation guides would help, but I really don't think that the lack thereof is particularly detrimental.

Rating:
Summary: Very thorough
Review: This is an excellent grammar for English speakers. It has a thorough review of preposition usage, an excellent guide to the subjunctive and pretty much everything else I usually get wrong ;-) I browsed for a couple of hours in Borders on Oxford Street and couldn't find anything better. Nicely type-set as well. The only problem is the hideously ugly cover.