Funny, informative and alarming, if somewhat outdated. Zaid effectively describes the book market, challenging our preconceptions and (despite a bleak picture) giving us hope about the future of bookshops.
It's hard to insist on this book's importance without falling in the same pitfalls it (and the other "important" Pennac book, Comme un roman) denounces: I'm tempted to say they should be must-reads for all teachers, but one of Pennac main takeaway is precisely that obligation kills the reading experience, and more generally the learning experience. This book (like all books, like all knowledge) shouldn't be praised and put on a pedestal, lest it be sacralized and then inevitably forgotten on untouched bookshelves, but simply read, experienced - the book with do the work by itself.
More concretely, Chagrin d'école attempts to deconstruct the image of the cancre - the "bad" student -, specially the one the teachers hold of him, much in the same movement that the teachers should help the cancre deconstruct his own image as a bad student.
Easy to read, funny and insightful. The short chapters make it fly by, I couldn't stop reading.
Originally a series of conferences about Charlemagne, this biography keeps the freshness of a spoken text but lacks the depths of a more serious historical analysis. Regardless, it's fun and easy to read, and a good introduction to the Carolingian Empire.
Interesting enough since I had little to no knowledge about the Etruscan culture and history, but even to me the presentation felt patchy and the research is undoubtedly outdated (there's apparently a newer version in the same series).