So many questions here...
On the number of books, well, there is no set number. If you want to reach and maintain full fluency, you should read and never stop reading in said language. Because once you stop... I remember my oboe teacher saying "for each day you don't practice, you loose one day of practice". It's the same with languages: for each day you don't practice, you loose what you gained on a day of practice.
For books in French, it depends what you want to read and your level of proficiency. Books for teenagers use grammatical structures and words that are easier to understand but they also use a lot of slang, which can make them harder for foreigners. They are not as useful to progress... but it's still a good start. For classics, I like Zola, especially the first volumes of the "Rougon-Macquart" series which are much shorter than the well-known ones. Short stories by Mérimée and Maupassant can be great and not too hard to read.
I'm curious about French books sold in Canada. Are they "proper" French or Canadian French (no offense intended, I call "proper" French the French spoken in Metropolitan France, same as "proper" English is British English to me, not American English) ? Because it's quite different. I remember seeing a Canadian movie last year and only needing subtitles when they were speaking... French ^^
Grammar isn't essential to get a basic level, that's what I keep telling my students. If you say "Je aller cinema hier" ("I go movie theater yesterday") people will still understand what you mean. It's not correct but it gets the meaning across. I would feel compelled to correct the sentence though ^^. If you want to speak properly, there are a few tenses you absolutely need :
- "présent" (present) of course: "je vais au cinéma" (I'm going to the movie theater)
- "passé composé" (past tense / preterite used for actions) to tell what you did in the past (yesterday for example): "hier, j'ai été au cinéma" (yesterday, I went to the movie theater)
- "imparfait" (past tense used for descriptions) to indicate a past setting: "hier, pendant que j'étais au cinéma..." (yesterday, while I was at the movie theater)
- "futur (simple)" (futur): "demain, j'irai au cinéma" (tomorrow, I'll go to the movie theater)
Those are only "indicatif" mode. To speak properly, you also need "conditionnel" (both "présent" and "passé" standard forme) and "subjonctif" ("présent" and "passé composé", don't bother with "imparfait" or "plus-que-parfait" unless you really want to master French conjugaison).
The literary tense have their uses, they just aren't usually explained by teachers (and many teachers don't know them
). It's something about linguistic precision and culture which makes it almost unbearable to read a book written in French using the present tense: a book tells a story. To be able to tell the story, it needs to have already happened so it should be written using past tense. The point of view however isn't in the present but in the moment the story happens so "passé composé" is also awkward. This is the reason why we use "passé simple" + "imparfait". But then we need other tenses to tell about things that happened in the past from the story's point of view: "passé antérieur" and "plus-que-parfait". And of course the corresponding "subjonctif" and "conditionnel"... Also don't forget future told from a past point of view: "futur antérieur".
