EVERYONE Has Read This but Me - The Catch-Up Book Club discussion

Is it 5 or 6? At any rate, I’ll finish 6 on Monday, and in case it’s 6, I’ll read your review then.

After 2/3-3/4 of this volume full of Albertine’s death and guilt, he’s FINALLY going to Venice. (I’d be curious to know how many times those words were actually used).

The review is 5 I had it with the wrong book.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I just finished 6 a few days back

I hope to start 7 later this month

Annnnnnd, now Albertine is Alive.

I feel like I've just been played. I'm mad now.
I will follow up in a few hours when this is over and read your comments and review.

I especially liked this comment you made in your review... He gives us a version of his interior monologue that he has edited for the reader’s consumption.

I thought that so true. He's guiding the reader, his sheep/puppets.

It's rather ironic yes, when he does FINALLY get to Venice, he's with his mother.

I was quite upset about the news of Albertine...both times, the 2nd time especially, but then just thought of the irony of it. And how with the snap of a finger, after almost 3/4 of the book, he's CURED. He doesn't love Albertine anymore. hahahhahahahah

It was interesting how all the women have now gathered...Odette, Gilberte...to round out the end of this volume.

Still quite a bit to go in the next... Time Regained. Where will the pm take us I wonder?

Let me know when you start on the next/last volume. I've a few other things in the queue as well anyway, so I won't start right away. As much as I'm curious now, and since we're at the last...really ready for the end.

Brenda wrote: "It's rather ironic yes, when he does FINALLY get to Venice, he's with his mother.

I was quite upset about the news of Albertine...both times, the 2nd time especially, but then just thought of the..."

PM gave us a huge clue abut what "love" in his world is about. 4 days after the her loss he , awakens with the thought that having lived 4 days w/o her, living without her is a possibility. Everything after that was predictable.

Yes back w Momma, is our mom-ma's boy. Except when his is on the lookout for hookers and or hookups. Is it not wonderful that the is suddenly so attractive to so many women all with jobs (mostly menial).

The man has no clue what love is, learns nothing form what love his friends friends and IMHO Proust might have done better if he has spent less of his writing time on matters of the heart, To his narrator, this is a foreign land wherein he is less than an observer..

Likely I will begin book 7 sooner rather than later.

How quickly I will progress is another matter
In the next few weeks, besides work I am facing midterms, cataract surgery am on the down slope of some major dental work and some where in there is work and the rest of normal life.

Phrodrick wrote: The man has no clue what love is, learns nothing form what love his friends find and IMHO Proust might have done better if he has spent less of his writing time on matters of the heart, To his narrator, this is a foreign land wherein he is less than an observer...

Which is hugely ironic, considering he has a grasp of all the emotions that go with it, just not what love really it.

How quickly I will progress is another matter
In the next few weeks, besides work I am facing midterms, cataract surgery am on the down slope of some major dental work and some where in there is work and the rest of normal life.

Proust sounds like the perfect accompaniment to all this. ; ) Just kidding. Wish you luck with everything. I can probably get started next week or so.

I am now reading book 7 on my kindle. It is the last part of an E copy with all books and all the Monsieur, translation.

FWIW
Page one was given as the 90% mark. Maybe a motivator?
That means every % increase must mean 10% of this one book done. I am at the 20% mark, but am only reading this during lunch and very selected times. So I will be slow.

Ok, thanks for the update. I will start soon, maybe I’ll dip in today, otherwise next week.

The YouTube audio I found shows about the same amount of time as the last volume. Although it’s a different format so we’ll see how it goes.

I did start this today and I'm enjoying it so far. It seems a bit more well rounded and thus interesting for me than the previous volumes as his characters are finally doing more than being party goers and bed hoppers.

I am in Chapter II.
Suddenly it is WWI.
WWI from the POV of society wastrels. Our hero is out of the war as he is and from the beginning has been too sick, Only now he is in and out of a sanitarium.

I cannot tell if he is making fun of all his high society friends, or if he is seriously this trivial in his take on WWI. Marcel Proust could not have been so personally isolated as to miss that much of this War was especially tragic for France. It was hardly a society night on the town for most of Europe.

He is slyly anti-American, which seems credible.

I get that he maybe does not want to take side, making him a rare Frenchman indeed. Still, I am not sure I am getting the author or the narrator. I believe the fault is mine and hope someone can help to better latch on.

I wasn't very far when I left off, so I’m going to start again. On a quick note, I got the feeling he was isolated wherever he was from the War. But I wasn’t concentrating at some points thus, going back to the beginning.

Well, after two attempts at "starting again" maybe three times is the charm. Only because after getting 2/3 through I'd realized it's an abridged version. Now I know why I kept missing the anti-American issue. Unfortunately for me, this audio is hard to come by and I can only find a text to speech copy of the full last volume. But I really can't fit the book in right now, so it is what it is. Alas...I'm starting yet again as I'm vowing to finish this.

Hopefully this time I will comprehend your thoughts now and be able to comment. LOL

Donno why I was reading Germans Gothas and thinking Zeppelin

An Inside Look at the Germans' Deadly Bomber - The New York Times

It is hard to envision just how large these were, The lower wing was around 5 feet from the ground and it held up to 12, 200 pound bombs. The pilot was not throwing them. Each bomb was taller than a human.
It is said of them they killed more crew during landing than in air battle. They were that hard to land.

QUick question

In the early part of the book St. Loupe is married to Gilberte and sleeping around with men and women. I got the impression that Marcel and Gilberte were also sharing a bed, (he did stay with them during his visit) almost by Robert's plan. Did it read that way to you?

My next post will take me to the 40% mark and will all be under spoiler alert.

That’s a great picture. Thanks for posting it.
I don’t know, I was rather under the impression that after all this time he really didn’t love her or vice versa but they became good friends? He’s even more sickly now, if he’d had a hard time being intimate with Albertine, I wonder it wouldn’t be harder now? I don’t remember what it was now, something Marcel said, but I thought he decided he was over her and that’s why they got along now.

My take on the first third.
It seems like since book 4 it is possible to have spoilers and there are a bunch in the first third of this one. I think it is important to remember that Proust is writing after WWI so he is free to be more sympathetic towards the “Boches” and openly anti_war. I wonder how much Proust knew he was dying as he would not live to finish, or have a finished version of the last several books. But from here on
Spoiler Alert
spoiler: (view spoiler)[

The book starts with St Loup Married to Marcel’s first love, Gilberte and His Uncle suddenly in love with the ex actress, ex courtesan Odette, G’s Mother. O well, except Robert is immediately and aggressively unfaithful. To me it reads like he sets her up to have Marcel on hand if she needs a lover. I have the Moncrief translation and I cannot be sure what Marcel, rather who Marcel is doing now that he is single again.

Suddenly everything shifts to he who had been our Clown Prince, Charlus. Marcel had prefaced this with what read, to me like an extended cynical satire on all of his old high society connections. If they are still alive, they are hypocrites about the war and just barely inconvenienced by it.The Baron starts his take over of the narrative with more of how hypocritical not just society , but the public is . From this he slides into an extended anti-war speech. The Germans and the French are the same people and the French are just as bad and and..and a lot of the same kinda of anti-war thinking that was the European and American reaction is here stated. An advantage being Proust is speaking what was being said at that time. Then comparing it to what he had been hearing before and during the war.

At this time, I was thinking the Proust was using Charlus to be his mouth speaker. That the author and the fiction were united.

Except we suddenly find our gently ageing super rich ‘invert’ enjoying a perversity on a level that would have lead Marcel to some level of violence had it been associated with he just barely remember great love, Albertene. Charlus seems to get sympathetic if not supportive treatment, for a level of depravity Marcel should find repulsive. Loe and behold St Loup was also known at thie males only house of assignation, And we are supposed to believe that Marcel found it only by chance that night. Sorry, but using the same logic Marcel used to explain how he knew Albertine had been lying tells us he was not there for the first time. Marcel does plays and not for the first time, voyeur on Baron Palamède de Charlus.

We are told, more than once that this palace for elite invert is Sodom *remember “Sodom is for men”, is also Pompeii and that the German Gothas overhead are the new Mt Vesuvius. We are left to think that this Sodom is blown apart. Taking with it not so secret secrets of Parisian High Society.

Speaking of translation, Moncrief keeps calling a particular employee an Assassin, I wonder if this is a French, period slang usage or a bad translation.
Several good jokes in the first third
Copy of a telegram :
I will be late, Lie to follow:

Said of a man who was not as bad as advertised:
He does not get along with his father, it is said they live in the same apartment, but go to different bars. (hide spoiler)]

That has to be more actual things happening than in any page count twice as long since Swann in Love.

Phrodrick wrote: That has to be more actual things happening than in any page count twice as long since Swann in Love.

It is nice to have more diversions in this last volume and he expanded a bit to show the hypocrisy of his cast of characters during a war as well. ; )

I'm going to be slower going on this one, as I've started yet again. Since it's a poor narration I'm not getting as much out of it and was not able to concentrate as much last week either.

Ok. I'm finally abandoning the audio and I'm switching to the book, so I'm going to be even longer on it. LOL Sorry.

I just had a quick thought while reading, when Marcel is at Combray and reflecting back on his childhood, it brought me back to last summer and starting the whole tome. Especially as the weather here is almost summer like these last few days. It's almost come full circle in a way.

I'm about 75+ pages in, so making some progress. I went back to the original books I started with and am reading the D. J. Engright revised edition. Although I'm not finding it's broken down into the chapters. So, I'll just be where I am I guess. This volume has about 530+ pages. The intro had a quick summary of Proust, and this was probably mentioned previously but I'd forgotten...after his mother's death in 1905 he spent time in a sanitarium. Autobiographies are not usually the most unbiased source of a person's life, however I'd be interested to know how much of these volume's parallel his life, are embellished, or just written for the book.

I am about the 1/2 way mark.

I am also hours past my first Cataract surgery, with the next one set for next week. Plenty of time for you to catch up.

At the present rate, I do not expect to finish in at least two and more likely 4 more weeks.

Ok. I apologize, you mentioned the surgery and I forgot. I hope it went well and wish you luck on the next.

As I hadn’t intended on physically reading it I’d already gotten a few interlibrary books with a short window, so I was going to try to push on thru Proust.

I’m curious now on Proust’s take on homosexuals vs strait men. As I’m reading this section I feel like he could be talking about present day US. The manly man seems to be an accurate description for his 19th century strait Frenchman. It’s just intriguing to me as, from my understanding, the typical French man is much more effeminate than say here in the states. They’re not as internal, they’re more physical in an affectionate way, not necessarily a sexual way either. Really I’m shocked at Proust’s descriptions here. It just goes against everything I thought I knew. I wonder how Proust would make that comparison here then.

Phrodrick wrote: I wonder how much Proust knew he was dying as he would not live to finish, or have a finished version of the last several books

I’m not halfway through, so I’ve planned to go back to your spoiler then and comment. But I just had a thought and I remembered your comment above... This last section has some of the same hypocrisy we’ve seen, but at the same time it’s much richer with events. I wonder if it’s the war and also, like you said, if he knew he was dying - I feel like the emotional tone is very different. Starting with Bergotte in the last volume and now Charlus, he’s giving us more end of life. And I feel like he’s really making some of his characters, the aforementioned especially, more well rounded.

Maybe this is Marcel growing as a person, as a writer? Our first glimpse is a boy. I feel like when he lost Albertine things changed. But then the war happens, he’s getting sicker. Until Bergotte, I don’t feel like there was a lot of emotional connection. Since, it seems chock full.

To me, the first 6.5 half was setting us up, flourishy, with beautiful details and writing, satirical on the hypocrisies of his society... that was the salad course, wetting our appetite, and now we’ve gotten to the meat and bones.

I’m only 1/3 in, but that was just my thoughts at present.

Just posted my review of book 6
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

AM still fighting some post op eye irritation and light sensitivity. Kinda makes the fact that I am using the old translation on my Kindle an advantage.

Has I think ended all he has to say about WWI, Dreadful affair, but hardly about Marcel so on to...

He huge awakening,his dream on the road to Damascus, will ok it was only uneven paving stones but still his personal moment of enlightenment.

Pages of it and then, will I must be in another in between moment, because I sorta thought he had ended the book.
I am somewhere in the 50-55% mark.

Side note: Proust had a nobody and then Marcel repeats an amazing accurate prediction of the future. It is a future Proust never lived to see. Which makes me believe that a lot of people understood that the treaty that ended WW I managed to end nothing.

At first I wondered what was going on in that hotel, if it was really spy stuff, and what Charlus had gotten himself into, and then slowly it was all revealed. Wow. Marcel is really pushing the envelope now it seems. and then St. Loup dies. I'm still not sure about Marcel and Gilberte. St. Loup has just died, but Marcel seems more interested in the Duchess de Guermantes and her reaction to her death and I don't think he even mentions Gilberte. Although, if I remember he was really sick after the news and didn't he go to the sanitarium shortly after?

I found it interesting when he was talking about the family of millionaires that retired from their café and started working again to help their niece/daughter-in-law and he insisted that was the only part of the book that was based on a factual person and event. Aren't we told many characters are loosely based on real people? Is it from him, or perhaps his contemporaries knowing?

Do you think he was still sleeping around at this point? he seems so sickly, just spent years in a sanitarium, that I just wonder how he could even manage. I did have to look it up to confirm as I always put Sanitarium with mental institution, but a quick search says: a medical facility for long-term illness, often associated with treatment of tuberculosis before antibiotics.

This really is a strange section though. I'm about halfway now. It's just rather of death and depravity.

I thought I remember from somewhere hearing the same thing...I thought the novel was over and it wasn't. LOLLLLLLLLLL Maybe it was the Blacklisted podcast, I'm not sure. But I swear that's not he first time I heard it.

Although, I also read that it jumps around a lot and I feel like I'm reading passages again, that he'd written nearly the same thing 50 pages ago or something.

I'm glad you're still able to read, at any rate.

I am a bit frustrated now, as it's sort of coming together, but I feel like I want to go back to the beginning to now understand it all better, knowing what I know. It was so difficult in the beginning as it really is different from most things I've read so I didn't know how to read it properly. Not that I totally understand now, I'm hoping the last 1/2 of this volume might get me there, but I've got a better feel for him and the characters.

"I feel like I want to go back to the beginning to now understand it all better, knowing what I know"

That seems to be a common reaction. Esp among the "believers" if you do not mind the expression.
I think back on what is about a year dominated by this thing and actively do not want to go back over it again.

Sure I missed stuff, but the point is I stood in the Niagara Falls of this novel's writing style and did not drown.

Before this I also read: (my review) https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
so I know he can be funny and MUCH briefer.
I may look for more by MP but I will need to be retired and very bored. Even then I may have to wait to see if I spend my advanced years alone. THEN I Might want to find out what got by me.

Found while looking for other Proust books:


https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...

Marcel Proust paid for reviews praising his work to go into newspapers

Novelist paid for flattering reviews of Swann’s Way to go on front pages of French newspapers, as revealed in letters to be auctioned

An other interesting find:
The Complete Short Stories of Marcel Proust
This looks ripe for a buddy read AFTER I finish book 7

I loved this line from the Guardian article...
However, within weeks of its publication some critics saw it as a work of genius, although others remained puzzled by it.

Phrodrick wrote: That seems to be a common reaction. Esp among the "believers" if you do not mind the expression.
I think back on what is about a year dominated by this thing and actively do not want to go back over it again.

Sure I missed stuff, but the point is I stood in the Niagara Falls of this novel's writing style and did not drown.

Before this I also read: (my review) https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
so I know he can be funny and MUCH briefer.
I may look for more by MP but I will need to be retired and very bored. Even then I may have to wait to see if I spend my advanced years alone. THEN I Might want to find out what got by me.

Well, I really wasn't going to dive right back in -- PART of me wants to reread it, LOL but that part might be the retired part of me as well. Or I may bring it to work, when we get back to the office and read it on the lunch break. Since I only take a half hour lunch, that may take me to retirement anyway. LOL

I really loved this part from Vol. 7...
"When I thought of what Bergotte had said to me: "You are ill, but one cannot pity you for you have the joys of the mind," how mistaken he had been about me! How little joy there was in this sterile lucidity! Even if sometimes perhaps I had pleasures (not of the mind), I sacrificed them always to one woman after another; so that, had fate granted me another hundred years of life and sound health as well, it would merely have added a series of extensions to an already tedious existence which there seemed to be no point in prolonging at all, still less for any great length of time....

Part of me wonders if this is just part of the depressive attitude he has towards writing and if it's leaching out to the rest of his life. Or also, if it's just part of life's...be careful what you wish for motif. How easy it is to get wrapped up on something, that you don't see the forest for the trees.

If I recall this passage, which I read this weekend, it was part of another of Marcel's trip into you only love what you ignore, or don;'t admit to loving or some such.

This may reflect the growing fatalism of the nearing death;s door author or an ongoing refusal of his character to think of love as something of great, or lasting romantic value , a matter of shared experience and two against the world or even a positive plus in one's life.

Author or character are terrible at love and of course only think in terms of pleasures of the flesh as the obvious alternative to pleasures of the mind. For all of Marcel's church going, little or nothing in the way of spiritual or religious philosophy is part of the messages in the books. Pages about church architecture, linage to the noble houses and maybe something about the music. Little or nothing about liturgy, ceremony or philosophy.

Clearly his is a world of some nasty night time habits and therefore he may feel it hypocritical to espouse religion . Charlus makes some pains about his religiosity, but weknow that with him pain is a pun.

I don't think I put it all into context, but now that you mention - yes, he's good at the outside of a church, details, bit by bit...but one doesn't hear a thing of what goes on inside. ; )

I am a little over halfway, the war is certainly over, and now he is going on about memory again, and I’m trying to make sense of what he’s trying to say.

Francois le Champi, which he goes on and on, and on about, and seems to love this book the most, which we are remembered as….the book his mother read to him. The sweetest night of his life. Go figure. He doesn't even love the book for anything about the book, but that his mother read it to him. It almost seems like his memories, he's remembering a book say, and he doesn't care about the book as much as he cares about the time period around it.

It is interesting to me, as he comes back to the Madeleine… and you talked about his not going INTO a church, but only appreciating the outward qualities of it….how the book opens for us readers as these memories, and perhaps the whole thing with his mother in the beginning should have tipped the reader off…he gently moves us into Ventuil’s daughter (I think it was) and her lesbian love scene…which escalates in different degrees/situations, until we have M. Charlus in the last volume. Not at all the lovely little book of flowers and steeples anymore.

Can we just say he’s really rather shallow?

Brenda wrote: "I don't think I put it all into context, but now that you mention - yes, he's good at the outside of a church, details, bit by bit...but one doesn't hear a thing of what goes on inside. ; )

I am ..."

I think we are within pages of each other. Likely you will finish before me.,
If you will allow me some "Man Slpaining:

Clearly Proust thinks that all of life is experienced as memory.
His revelations about himself is that all of his memories are grist for what will be his great novel. You know the one we are almost finished reading.
What makes the artist, of whatever media special is that "ONLY" through art can we mere people have a chance to add the memories of past times and past peoples into our understanding of whatever it is we understand.

Further a measure of great art is that is uses the mundane, that is the not average that makes up the average (or something like that ) to create the generalities that allow art to transient time.

That will be 50 Cents USD and you do not have to re read the 4000 plus pages.
Your welcome.

Come to think of it, how much of this book is just Man Splaining, a weird little man at that.
Down with the patamony!

That doesn’t make sense, then the pm is saying because my brother reads only Readers Digest and Tractor Supply catalogues his memories are not as memorable as say pm the great and gifted artiste? But perhaps the pm is a pompous, shallow, egocentric pm ? Sometimes his writing is beautiful, but more often just drones on trying to say the same thing in as many ways humanely possible. Just in case you didn’t understand it the first fifty times. Arrogant and then throws some depravity in every now and then to... make sure we’re awake? Maybe he’s the poster boy for- I forgot who it was, I think the boys at the hotel, or Robert, but Marcel was saying how if you’re surrounded by people doing “bad” things, after while you’re not going to think they’re bad because it’s commonplace. And he’s continually pointing the finger at Albertine, Charlus, Robert... sheesh

I’m trying to plow through this and hopefully finish before the weekend. At this point a) I’m hugely curious where it’s going and b) really excited to see the back end of it.

Although- this section especially seems to spin round, he didn’t finish editing correct- I mean Albertine came back to life last volume and now she’s dead again, although it does have many similarities to soap operas and telenovelas. So I’m a bit nervous if the end wraps it up. If it’s like Sanditon or something, maybe I’m going to lose my mind! 😂😂😂

I feel like now he’s moved on to say that the average Joe, not being talented or artsy, cannot possibly appreciate art in any species. (...were not the public incapable even of understanding what an artist has attempted in a realm of discovery which is outside his experience)... Seriously??
Really want to just throw this book across the room right now while giving Proust the double bird.
Kinda moved up from pm to grande m.

Although he’s right. Half the time I have not a clue what he’s driving at, but I think he does that on purpose because he’s artsy. And thus more clever than I. 😉

I’m on page 317, if that’s helpful.

Now he seems to be saying the women that men have loved in the end are really of no consequence and they all run together after while anyway. 😂😂😂

It just keeps getting better and better. I feel like the further on I go...the real M.Proust may be showing his true colors?

I’m at about p 362 if you’re not there yet.

I went from really enjoying this volume in the beginning- we had the war, and his, characters he seemed to be much more tender with... it was a nice change from the previous- but It’s going downhill for me unfortunately and I’ve moved to just want to get this over with. Which after spending 9 months on this, is a little upsetting.
That part of me that wanted to go back to the beginning is way over that.


It’s just so Marcel driven now. He lives in a bubble, often as a recluse, and goes on as if he’s the expert on all things. Especially women. But he’s always pointing the finger and never takes ownership. It was all Albertine’s fault for his unhappiness. All these people who are at the party and now old, and suddenly they’re likeable and good natured, so obviously everyone of them has changed. It’s no wonder it was a book mostly about horrible love affairs gone wrong and even more horrid dinner parties since he doesn’t seem to be able to conceptualize anything outside of his little artsy fartsy egotistical box.

Oh, and listening to him drone on about his process of writing his great “work of art” was an eye roll. And comparing his style to Baudelaire and some other writers... I’m just getting fed up with mr self-centered- especially considering by now most of his major characters seem to be out of the picture - so it’s just him going on about him. Joy.

I finished this last night. I’ll hold off on further comments or my review to discuss here. Don’t feel rushed however, just had things in the pipeline I needed to get to.

If I had not said so already, What was going on in the hotel was the same kind of stuff, except men only that he found so terrible when Albertine or women indulged. Hypocrisy anyone?

I think I will review the entire 7 books as a living example of why Mansplaining is so hard to listen to.

I am now about 3 days past Eye Op #2 with no intentions to do anything to my 3rd eye. Even if that one is supposed to be free. Shrug

I think I am close to 70% in the last book, and suspect it will be at least two more weeks to finish. I do not believe I will be hugely motivated to re read anytime soon.

Especially Mansplaining from the pm’s POV, which to me is a bit narrow, and probably a bit outside the ‘normal’ margins of society? Lol

Glad you’ve made it through your surgeries! Perhaps the pm, the highly knowledgeable and all knowing of people’s thoughts and behaviors can help you with your third eye?

I feel I sound cynical. At any rate, I’m not going to lie- after 6 volumes of the pm doing his best to expound on things to the nth degree, I found myself skimming a bit after he got to the party.

I have managed to drag out getting to the 80ish% mark and am determined to finish it this week.

I get that Proust did not make it to an advanced age, About age 51 at his death in 1922. His ageing is bad because it makes people ugly and I forget who they are, Really?

Not a thought about what the aging have to suffer? Youth indeed is wasted on the young.

He is now spinning off about how the new generation lets just anybody have a title and they all get invited..Life is terrible
Made me remember that for all his pages and pages and.. about the nobility inheriting their Nobel qualities made me remember

No word about in breeding, The Queens disease (hemophilia)
The Hapsburg Lip
https://www.mun.ca/biology/scarr/4270...

Thanks to that prancing fool Charlus we have some idea about whose title is titlier than whose, of previous generationd, but only the new married into titles are parvenu .

I will finish this soon, my head is working to see if it can throw up

I’ve been curious as to your take on this volume, and it seems like you’re getting about the same excitement from it as I did.

I’ve not been getting full GR notifications lately so I’m trying to remember to check in randomly. However, I’m in that category of the pm’s favorite people, those who have gotten older, and memory fails sometimes. I’m glad I caught your comments though.

I think that section (when he “suddenly” realises he and his cronies have gotten older) really set my teeth on edge. It felt like it came from nowhere and was an excuse to get to acquaint his “readers” with yet more of his oh so intriguing discourses, and educate us non arty people on the facts of life. Or some such long winded pm brilliance.

I suppose part of me wonders with his untimely death, and lack of editing, I should not be as critical. Although part of me also thinks the last few volumes were not as lengthy due to this fact, so I do feel grateful for that aspect.

So let it be written, so let it be read. And Reviewed:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

One of my longer reviews, but on a scale of 1 to Remembrances, maybe not that long.

I feel a freedom I have not felt since I started the climb. Events may draw me back, but thankfully my reading slate is crowded.

Good review you gave Phrodrick. I left my review as well. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

I agree with the Freedom - I was glad to have that done.
I was disappointed with the last volume as I said in the review. For me it was a frustratingly long read. And I don't always have the patience a really long book deserves.

Thank you though for suggesting this and keeping me up to par, as I know I would have quit LONG, LONG ago otherwise. :)) Also for the lively discussions which at least helped me to understand this tome better.

Thank you,

I too think I would have some excuse but for the fact that you hung in with me.

Your review did a better job of staying with book 7 and with making plain how up hill, and into the wind this is/was.
Loved your last phrase.
I have read Proust.

It is an achievement. We gave birth-It did take about 9 months. There were a lot of parallels -
I love this experience.
I hate this book.
I wonder how it will end.
I wonder if this will ever end.
Ooh, this is exciting.
My goodness this is PAINFUL.
I'm never doing this again.
Morning sickness AGAIN.
Ok, Maybe just the first volume.

Not many can say they've read Proust. ALL 7 volumes no less. It feels like the 26.2 Marathon Ribbon...only those who've actually competed would really care/understand anyway. Part of me doesn't give a crap, especially considering the last 1/2 of the last volume, but part of me on the inside is like YEAH! I DID read Proust. So there. ; ) Whether I'm in the league of Proust's intended "readers" (the artsy bunch) or not...whatevs... I've read it. I'm of that "ilk".

I suppose it has changed my life. Bur probably only in that in the right circles I could say I've read it. Since I don't come upon those often, it's really only a slight change. But I am glad for the experience. And I am glad to carry that little accolade on my shoulders if the opportunity presents itself.

High Five to you Phrodrick/Barry.

So what I have I learned?
Just started
The Tale of Genji
a 1000 year old novel, perhaps the first. A mere wisp of a book at 1300 odd pages.
Care to buddy up again?

Oooh, that’s a hefty one!

Thanks for the offer but I’ve got a queue of books on my personal TBR I’ve been wanting to get to and with yard work now and a return to in person working in the near future I’m having to scale back my reading.

Enjoy, I’m sure it will be a nice change of pace.