Welcome to Litsy!

2024 wrap up:
41 books read
24 fiction
17 non-fiction
Favorites: More Work for Mother, Mother Tongue, Poverty by America, The Best of Everything

Phenomenal ending to an unreal work.

Mind-bendy, ultra-reflective and fascinating, feels like something written in the future.... Pretty often I'd say to myself "Yeah this is wild stuff," especially in the second half. Somehow he managed to end this thing without letting me down at all. I love it.

It seems now therefore that there is no humiliation so great that one should not put up with it easily, in the knowledge that after a few years our buried faults will be no more than an invisible dust over which will smile the smiling and blossoming peace of nature.

I'M DONE!! 🎉🎉 After 15 months, I wrapped up #morningswithmarcel.
It was a journey and there were some rough spots, but overall, I loved it. Brilliant! 🌸💗🌸

One might say TIME REGAINED is actually the time you experience AFTER finishing all of IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME.

All 7 volumes read by the late, great Neville Jason!

I shall see what Marcel is obsessing about this time. These long novels are focused on at the most 3 events in one locale.

This was magnificent more often than not. Proust saw people, and places, and experiences, and he brought them together to produce a stunning portrait not only of Time but of the reader. I‘m sure it‘s possible to read ISoLT without seeing anything of yourself in the scenes and observations that make up the narrator‘s life, but I think you‘d have to wilfully disengage from the text to do it. And this, friends, is a book to ENGAGE. Bloody marvellous.

I‘ve decided to do some cappuccino tourism this summer. Today I cycled out almost into the country and found a coffee shop with great atmosphere, reasonable prices, and very nice drinks. I‘ll stop in again next time I‘m in the area.

I hit a funny part in Proust‘s last, epic party while I was there. Much snickering ensued; enough that I ALMOST wished I‘d sat on the deserted patio instead of in the shop itself. Luckily, no one minded me. #gaymay

Took my daily Proust outside with some genmaicha. Depending on how much I read today, I‘ll finish IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME on either Sunday or Monday. It‘s been such a journey. #gaymay

I took Proust to Ikea, as you do. I had to put him aside for a bit because reading time was in short supply, but we‘re reunited now and I hope this is the home stretch. We‘ll see how the last 170 pages go.

NB: Ikea‘s piped in music was a weirdly good tonal fit with the narrator‘s third major time reclamation moment. Honestly, it shook me. I sat there in the returns & exchanges waiting area and had an Experience. #gaymay

Snack prep for my 30th consecutive Readathon. I haven‘t missed one since September 2008, and this is probably the least I‘ve ever done in the lead-up. I didn‘t go out and buy any special snacks. I haven‘t really assembled a pile. I‘m just gonna read some Proust, finish the fantasy I‘m in the middle of, tackle at least one short story, slot in as much ElfQuest as I‘ve got time for, and listen to my audiobook while I play Candy Crush. #deweyapril

Supper involved enchilada peppers and Proust. To be honest, I got pretty durned tired of the narrator‘s creepy, controlling obsession with Albertine in the previous volumes, but I‘m HERE for his response to the upheavals World War I provoked. Gimme more.

First bike ride to the library in 2023! The wind made it a real pain, but at least I got some exercise.

I picked up a couple books for my mum (who won‘t get her own library card 🤷‍♀️), Maureen Johnson‘s latest Stevie Bell mystery, two volumes of FENCE that just made it through processing, and the last volume of Proust. The end is in sight!

(As a sidebar, I‘m a bit annoyed Litsy‘s grouped my posts about Vol 1 under this listing. Sigh.)

I‘m puppysitting wee Allie this afternoon, and she‘s stepped up to help me wallow in the last hundred pages of SWANN‘S WAY. It‘s still amazing. Why didn‘t anyone tell me Proust was so much fun? I picked up the next volume on the way over here so I can dive in next week.

This afternoon I enjoyed the classic combination of Marcel Proust and chili-cheese fried corn. And enjoyed is definitely the word for it, because I‘M TOTALLY IN LOVE WITH THIS BOOK. I expected it to be worthwhile, but I had no idea it‘d be so readable, or that it‘d do such glorious things with the relationship between interiority and outside influence. If I didn‘t have so many non-renewable library books on hand, it‘d be my primary read.

So I finished Time Regained at 1:00 o‘clock in the morning after reading this for over a year because I read other books in between. All I can say is wow. So much of Proust‘s writing in this volume is euphoric and how he decided to finish the ending makes me actually want to start writing instead of just making notes and thinking about my stories in my head. I loved this so much! ❤️

Finished the 7th and final book of In Search of Lost Time. It has taken me a decade to read these books, so an era is over.

In this volume Proust covers WWI in Paris, have quite a discussion on literature and where his inspiration to write this books come from. He also looks at how time changes people, both how they look and who is “in”.

#1927 #192025
2nd book read for #JubilantJuly
#foodandlit #France

Wow, deep. Thank you, Duolingo!

Too many things to do, so only reading articles today. This one is about Proust, who would have celebrated his 150th birthday these days.

Well 2020 came to a close and so did my year long Immersion in Proust. There is an article from the New York Times that I found recently written by another reader who experienced the “plague year” reading Proust and finding, much as I did, that he was an excellent companion bringing diversion, observation and reflection in a way that resonated with me this year. I will miss him but I am sure I will return - if just to passages, for his language

Yeah! Proust gets it‼️📖🤓❤️

The greatness of true art [...] lies in rediscovering, grasping hold of, and making us recognize this reality, distant as it is from our daily lives, and growing more and more distant as the conventional knowledge we substitute for it becomes denser and more impermeable, this reality which we run a real risk of dying without having known, and which is quite simply our life.

As for the enjoyment the beautifully expressed thought of a master gives to a truly discerning mind or a spirit that is genuinely alive, it is probably entirely healthy but, however prized the men may be who can really appreciate it (and how many of them are there in 20 years?), It does reduce them to being no more than the complete consciousness of another.

⬆️ Bombs are falling on Paris, but in the catacombs of the Metro, you may get lucky, you may “bite straight into the fruit without coveting it with your eyes and without asking permission.”

This last volume of ‘In Search of Lost Times‘ was a real worthwhile grande finale in which all characters of the past come by again and in which the wonderful heartbreaking title of the work proves its meaning.
Marcel‘s observations about aging and losing youth and your past are spot-on.

#ReadingEurope2020 🇫🇷

The last Backlisted podcast episode made me think seriously about reading the whole of Proust this year, bit by bit. I suppose I'll have to keep myself in les madeleines, as it only seems appropriate.