read Proust's In Search of Lost Time

I’m nearly finished with Swann in Love. Just a few more pages.

I’ve just finished Combray and begun Swann in Love. Might have to stay up all night if Part 2 is really good.

I’m going to try to finish off all the other books I’ve started, including Don Quixote, before I start this mammoth book. Hopefully this summer, I’ll be able to get stuck in.

My dad, seeing me carry the six-volume set: “Sure looks like a lot of lost time to me!”
I’m currently in the middle of Swann’s Way.

...and it is a nice, leisurely read. But it’d be cool to be able to say I did it, yeah. Maybe by the end of ‘08? Doesn’t bode well when I realize I’ve only read one short book so far this year, but goals always help. :)

I can’t claim any great literary sensibility or technique. I’m not even sure if I can actually tell other people of the essences of what made this book so great. Yet without a doubt in my eyes this book is a wonder, as its each passages and phrases ring with poignant descriptions and profound thoughts. As I went through it page by page I was almost overwhelmed by the world Proust created, the characters always living and thinking beings instead of being some two dimensional backdrops created to drag the plotline along. Some of the passages and situations resonated with me so much that I found it hard to read on to next page, staring at it and reading it again and again like with a favorite painting in a museum. It isn’t often that a writing inspires me so much as to create a ‘holy moment’ (waking life anyone?) outside of the book’s boundries.

Of course, this was a deeply personal experience, so your mileage may differ. But I have no hesitation in recommending this work to anyone who enjoys reading, to at least encounter it once in his/her life.

I finished Swann about 2 months ago, I need a break before picking it up again,and meanwhile read something that’s lightweighted( literally).

I have at last finished Combray and am about to move on to Swann in Love. I’ve been taking a little breather, but tonight will plunge back in.

I read Swann’s Way about a year ago and I am about 200 pages through Within a Budding Grove. I’m also reading Monsieur Proust by Celeste Albaret who lived with him/worked for him during the last years of his life while he was writing In Search of Lost Time.

I have finished the “Overture” to the first volume. It’s a drop in the bucket. It took me a long time to get through this small chapter. Doesn’t bode well for finishing the whole work before I die, does it?

However, now that I’m reading “Combray” it’s going a little faster.

I think I’m getting hooked.

Still wishing for a better translation.