🇬🇧🇺🇸🇨🇦🇦🇺 English Diary, 30th of June 2024 Lately, reading has been to me a rather multiform activity. Work life balance, as everyone knows it. As I struggle to keep practicing different languages (Japanese, German), I challenge myself with reading involving a certain amount of time given to vocabulary and grammar research. But every now and then, I get back to reading in my mother tongues. And suddenly, less time is spent. Reading speed increases and the mind scans whole sentences faster. And the words are so familiar, that it seems to echo deeper than for languages I still have to get more proficiency in. With a good friend, we agreed to go through an old French book for over a week for both discovery and consistency. The choice was ‘Yvain, the Knight of the Lion’ by the medieval writer ‘Chretien de Troyes’. From the same author, a long time ago I read his ‘Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart’ and was fascinated but not enchanted to the point of remembering anything of the story. However, this one ‘Yvain’'s book has been a highly stimulating reading. Just like a child, I loved following the adventure of this brave knight who goes through different trials and ends up overcoming every obstacle, even when they are of his own making. Many moments are still vividly painted in my mind, like the fight scenes with their detailed, graphic description. Or the highly inspired speeches the characters give each other when expressing their feelings. It is like finding yourself in a world where everything is more intense, more colorful even if it's but imaginary. Personally, even if we label the Middle Ages ‘Dark Times’ I’ve always felt carried away as a child by knight stories and the imagery related to it. And somehow, "Yvain" brought me back to the magic of such tales.