Goodreads Mobile | see what your friends are reading

Jan 21, 2008

Jessica rated it:

AFTER:

Okay, well, I really screwed up my schedule this weekend, so now it's the latening am and nothing's happening for me in the sleep department. Honestly I can't think of a more appropriate time to review this book, which begins with insomnia.

This was great. It really was. Granted, it's not for everyone, but nor is it the rarified hothouse orchid cultured specifically and exclusively for an elite audience of fancy-pants dandies with endless supplies of Ritalin and time More...

60 comments like (64 people liked it)

Jun 16, 2010

karen rated it:

so i figured i would finally read me some proust, get in touch with my roots or whatnot. and i have to say, for my introduction, it was kind of a mixed bag. the first part i had real problems with. i am not a fan of precocious or sensitive children, so the whole first part was kind of a wash for me. i know, that's terrible, right?? here is this Monument of Great Literature, and i am annoyed, as though i were watching some children's production of oklahoma, or any musical, really. (shudder) there More...

33 comments like (41 people liked it)

Apr 29, 2010

Koeeoaddi added it

I really wanted to like this book, but I just kept dozing off. Lovely poetic nothing happens for page after gorgeous page, while the the Jurassic era becomes the Cretaceous, colonies of brachiopods harden into cliff faces and the cool afternoon sun slants in on the morning of the Cenozoic.

I think someone eats a cookie.

20 comments like (31 people liked it)

Dec 09, 2011

tim rated it:

My goodness, Proust could write. Had he chosen to describe paint drying on a wall (which for all I know he did), he would have transformed that dull event into a profound experience as moving as a passionately executed piano sonata. At first I admit I wasn’t sure how I was going to do with the musings of an overly precocious mama’s boy. But it didn’t take long for me to respect Proust for introducing himself as an needy and overly-sensitive young boy. Such as when he would be sent upstairs to hi More...

0 comments like (14 people liked it)

Nov 16, 2009

David rated it:

I’m on a life raft floating across a sea of words, pulled into swirling tidal pools to observe the rich, vibrant forms spawning like phantasmagoric aliens (forms that once appeared mundane but only because, previously, no one had observed them as closely), pulled deep down by the undertow—note the hilarious mating habits in-situ of the foolish Parrot Fish—pulled out across hyaline waters sparkling like blue diamonds to drift peacefully in the doldrums before being abruptly dashed over great cata More...

25 comments like (22 people liked it)

Feb 19, 2010

Jen rated it:

I want to write that Proust changed my life. He seems to have been just what so many others needed (just check out the glowing, frothy-mouthed reviews from nearly everyone). Unfortunately, I missed something in my months long reading of Swann's Way: a point. I know, I know, there isn't one...and that in itself is a point. Right? No? Can't I just turn in my literary snob card now and not be banished from GR? Because I need a plot, some kind of dramatic something. Something that p More...

18 comments like (17 people liked it)

Jan 31, 2012

Manny rated it:

I think my original impetus for reading this was Thomas Disch's excellent short story "Getting into Death". Finding out that she probably only has a few weeks to live, the heroine immediately goes out, buys an edition of Proust, and starts reading. She's only able to relax once she's finished. Well, clearly, it had to be pretty good, and maybe I shouldn't wait until the last month of my life.

OK... it IS pretty good! Like all truly great novels, it's also very strange. Prous More...

0 comments like (8 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Jess rated it:

I wouldn't even know where to begin writing about (much less reviewing, gasp) the first volume of Proust's masterpiece. So I'm copying and pasting an article about it from salon.com that I found entertaining and witty. It's long (though I had to cut over 3,000 words to make it fit), but if you're a member of a site called Goodreads, maybe you won't mind.

Reading "In Search of Lost Time"
By Jane Smiley

Aug 28, 2005 | After I finished "In Search of Lost More...

0 comments like (13 people liked it)

Oct 15, 2011

Mariel rated it:

Alternative Celebrity Death Match round versus The Fellowship of the Ring.

My great eye counts the stars in the sky. One burns less bright today, less if today is today and more if not yesterday or tomorrow. I have no fingers to count the days. That other super villain, that Count Von Count, laughs as he enumerates.
I remember when that star was born new, when it was a part of the constellation that long dead men named after their beloved pooch, Fido, guiding them home to slippe More...

4 comments like (11 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Sam rated it:

There wouldn't happen to be a Proust-Hater's Club around here, would there?

"Swann's Way" is awful. I kept hearing people fawn over it, so I read it all the way through, just to make sure. I am in the process of reading the entire set. There are so many books, each with so many ideas chained together, connected but disconnected, different, but headed in vaguely the same direction. It's like watching a freight train. No. It's like watching a freight train wreck.

More...

6 comments like (7 people liked it)

Jul 23, 2011

Lena rated it:

This is the most frustrating, time-consuming, difficult, rewarding, and profound novel I've ever read.

The language is just stunning. Proust has this way of making everything, even things you've seen and experienced many times, seem just completely new and vibrant and meaningful.

One of the best things about Swann's Way is the experience that you have in reading it. I guess that's because you know that it's just so damn hard, and you still stick it out. There's just so much More...

0 comments like (7 people liked it)

Feb 15, 2010

Elizabeth rated it:

I heard a report on NPR that falling asleep during a live music performance could enhance the experience; it opened the unconscious mind to the music. So here I confess that I have fallen asleep at the Opera (note: story from Shiller while jet-lagged, not a good idea). I am making this confession because I remembered NPR's condoning it while reading Swann's Way, not because I was falling asleep, but because my mind kept drifting. I'd be in the middle of a paragraph and suddenly thinking about ra More...

6 comments like (20 people liked it)

Sep 08, 2007

Robert rated it:

It took me nearly 30 years to finish "Remembrance of Things Past" (but it was worth it!) and I always say that one of the reasons was that every time I set it aside I wanted to start back up from the beginning again. The reason? The bulk of "Swann's Way" is a self-contained novel called "Swann in Love" that is probably the finest portrait of a doomed one-sided love affair you will ever find. So by all means read it, appreciate it for what it is, and then keep readin More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Sep 29, 2011

AC rated it:

(I finally found an hour today to read the last few pages. This is a marvelous translation -- Lydia Davis' - and I highly recommend it. It is a pity that she didn't do the subsequent volumes. The 'new' translation of volume II is by Mark Treharne, and the reviews are more mixed -- and, in any event, the book can't be bought on Kindle, where I'm reading it, in the United States. So much for cyberspace..... So I'll have to read volume two in the old Montcrieff - Montcrieff/Kilmartin even bein More...

13 comments like (4 people liked it)

Nov 22, 2008

Ryan rated it:

holy good god, nevermind the whole "one of the greatest works of modern literature" spiel, or mind it, because it's probably true, but more practically: this has got to be one of the most pleasurable reading experiences out there. it's been a while since i've read the Montcrief translation, and i remember laughing a lot more with that one, probably because Montcrief's overwrought translation actually amplifies the feeling of exhaustive detail in Proust's descriptions. it feels so com More...

1 comment like (7 people liked it)

Jun 04, 2007

David rated it:

most important is that you read the translation by c.k. scott moncrieff. the new translation by lydia davis is apparently much more true to proust's writing. it turns out that there was a gain in translation. so much so, that someone who read the french version and moncrieff's translation said that it should be translated back into french, and read that way, rather than in the original.

all of this is illustrated by the change in title: moncrieff translated the french not litera More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 14, 2009

Melody rated it:

Something about Marcel, the narrator of Swann’s Way, reminds me of Michael Jackson. Maybe it’s because, (since he just recently died of mysterious, drug induced causes), wherever I go I’m hearing Rockin’ Robin or Ben or Billy Jean and I'm applying a Michael Jackson spin to everything in life or maybe even if Michael Jackson had not died, but was in fact still preparing for his “This is It” come back tour throughout Europe and beyond – perhaps I would still get this vague thought of MJ while I r More...

8 comments like (4 people liked it)

Mar 07, 2010

Lavinia rated it:

I drink my coffee in large cups and short sips. It usually takes me at least an hour (even two - when I'm reading) to finish it. Reading Proust was like drinking coffee. I absolutely enjoyed it but I wasn't able to read more than 20-30 pages in one sitting and so it took me about half a month to finish it.

There are books I read because the pace is fast, they're entertaining and they keep your mind alert. And sometimes they make you think. As in: "I think this book is good" More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Aug 21, 2007

Matt rated it:

Reading "Swann's Way" was simultaneously one of the most enlightening and most disheartening things I've ever done. The enlightening part should be obvious - never in modern literature has someone dealt so eloquently with issues of memory, love, nostalgia, etc. There is his famous episode of the Madeleine, which frames the whole book - the unnamed narrator bites into a Madeleine dipped in tea, a treat he hasn't indulged in years, and all of a sudden feels this unplaceable rush of More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Mar 21, 2010

Katelyn rated it:

Every semester I find a good long novel that I read for a couple of months on end, simply to keep me sane amid the sea of required reading and writing. That said, I also tend to like any lengthy novel I read, whether it fits my usual criteria or not - by the time i finish, I feel I'm losing a close friend who has simply shown me his flaws. One thing Proust doesn't excel in is readability - but length makes up for this, since after a hundred or two pages the complexity of his sentences began to More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Aug 15, 2011

Garrett rated it:

M. Proust was actually generous enough to outline the frame of his ideations. The beginning of which introduces the model of encompassing individual experience. He ingeniously crafts characters which change just as much as you may. You will find yourself laughing, crying, and marveling at his picturesque illustrations while winding your attention through his labyrinthine postulations. However, reading it quickly or slowly will not curtail the excitement of the read, as the characters themselves More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 01, 2011

Moon 佛月球 Будда Луны rated it:

∝δ∝δ∝δ∝δ∝δ∝•PROLOGUE TO THE PRELUDE•∝δ∝δ∝δ∝δ∝δ∝

The streams of formless, arbitrary thoughts directly derived from the outward experience of form are preserved in the human mind as memories, encapsulating the fleeting nature of time as it shelters the unobtainable moments in the past, protecting the occurrences in time that shall no longer be regained.

It is embedded in the impenetrable realm of the consciousness. The vessel from which the outward perception from the physica More...

3 comments like (2 people liked it)

Apr 14, 2011

Petra rated it:

Wow! A beautifully told & good story.
A slow, meandering, detailed and lovingly ponderous look at Memory (forgotten, remembered, accuracy), Time (continuous continuum, linear, lost), Love and Nostalgia.
Not for the lovers of fast-paced, action-packed drama. Not to be read swiftly but to be slowly savoured and chewed over. Funny, too, at times. Proust does have a sense of humour.
In essence, without giving anything away, Swann’s Way is told in 3 interconnected stories: one of chi More...

11 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Andy rated it:

Superb; life-changing, for me. The text IS a kind of thought and makes that way of thinking available to the reader. An unparalleled combination of depth, clarity, and beauty; he names and explains absolutely everything, in an endless stream of the most rewarding possible metaphors.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 08, 2009

Tim rated it:

I've had a few false starts with this book over the last year or so, but this time something clicked. I love it, and I'm starting to appreciate why Proust is so highly regarded. This is more than a novel - it's a work of philosophy, of psychology, of artistic criticism, of musical appreciation, all synthesised into a seamless whole.

One of my favourite experiences when reading is to come across a phrase or a description or a character that immediately strikes a chord, either because i More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 16, 2010

Osho rated it:

I own this edition but read a combination of the Moncrieff and Kilmartin omnibus and the public domain version at DailyLit. I'm using the page count from the hardcover, which is, with introduction, 474 pages. Should I read the second volume, I'll switch editions.

At this time I would like to quote from that finest flower of the cinematic arts, Barbarella: "It amuses the Great Tyrant to resent the expense of feeding orchids to slaves." This, then, was my experience of the firs More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 29, 2009

Bram rated it:

At the risk of sounding banal, I'll say that reading Proust has been quite unlike any of my previous prose experiences. Frequently I found myself staring through the pages into pieces of personal thought and memory that were previously unavailable. It's as if Proust, rather than simply being content with constructing a novel that pulls one fully into his own world, has conjured a literary device to extract memories ensconced so thoroughly that their sudden and prominent placement into the fore More...

5 comments like (20 people liked it)

Feb 14, 2010

Alison rated it:

This review contains spoilers, but nothing gets spoiled that you wouldn't figure out from the jacket flap. If, indeed, you're the kind of person whose enjoyment gets spoiled at all by knowing plot elements in advance.

What excites me most about this book is the combination of two apparently incompatible aspects: first, the quality of poignancy, wit, comedy, and, like, realism, in the observations; second, the constant questioning of what observation and reality are. The book is a

More...

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 31, 2008

Brendan rated it:

Let me state first that to each volume, and the novel as a whole I give emphatic FIVE STARS, but within the novel there were certain volumes that I found more stirring (and I believe this to be an intentional effect of the novel; volumes 3 & 4 deal more with Marcel's experience in society, an experience that quells his artistic drive, and this suppression is manifested in the text, those volumes being relatively superficial, not so full of that artistic reverie, less often reaching those same he More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 21, 2010

Antiabecedarian rated it:

I have this book on my shelf because it was passed down from a long lost friend to another friend of mine, who left it in his house with all the rest of his possessions after Katrina. This friend let me have the first scavange, and I picked up Swann's Way, among other treasures. I remember these two gentlemen discussing philosophy and films every morning over coffee and their first cigarettes. One was too erudite and the other not a fool, but the erudite one took the upper hand, making the no More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)