ReemK10 (Paper Pills)’s Comments (group member since Dec 26, 2012)

ReemK10 (Paper Pills)’s comments from the The Year of Reading Proust group.

Cheryl wrote: "On the general topic of Books & eBooks, a friend just sent this link to me. Thought this group may enjoy the new technological device, BOOK.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhcPX1..."

This is just so perfect! Love it! Nothing like a real book! Thanks for sharing Cheryl. I sent it to all the people trying to get me to get with the times and e-read and FB.

Great find Aloha! I can't really tell looking at that small a page. $5000.00 US seems awfully cheap for a first edition don't you think? It was nice to look at it though. Thanks Aloha :)

I have a question. Does anyone know what font was used in Proust's very first edition of À la recherche du temps perdu? If he paid for it(see below), do you think he might have had a say in which font to use?

"The work was published in France between 1913 and 1927. Proust paid for the publication of the first volume (by the Grasset publishing house) after it had been turned down by leading editors who had been offered the manuscript in longhand." Wikipedia

The reason I ask is because I just read: It's known that reading text in a difficult font puts people in a more analytical mindset, because it makes their thinking more slow and deliberate.

Could Proust have factored this in with a particular choice of font?

Patricia wrote: "I just don´t know how I found this incredible link but I am totally fascinated.I am argentine and posting from my country.
I read vol I about 15 years ago in a reading group which concentrated most..."

Welcome Patricia. We're happy to have you read with us. :)

Marcelita wrote: ‘For it seemed to me that they would not be ‘my’ readers but the readers of their own selves… with its [the book’s] help I would furnish them with the means of reading what lay inside themselves."

This is certainly true, but isn't this at odds with

"If we visited Mars or Venus while keeping the same senses," he writes, "they would clothe everything we could see in the same aspect as the things of Earth." Perhaps, Marcel speculates, the code of habituated perception eventually becomes too hard for the artistic code-breakers to crack. He adapts the metaphor of travel to point to the all-too familiar truth he suspects may apply to the artistic realm: Wherever I go, there I am." (I wont cite because of spoilers)


What position are we to take while reading ISOLT? Do we bring ourselves along or do we look through Proust's eyes only?

Marcelita wrote: "ReemK10 (Got Proust?) wrote: "Maison de « Tante Léonie » - Place Lemoine, Illiers-Combray (28)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/51366740...

Marcel's bedroom: http://www.flickr.com/photos/..."
Thanks Marcelita, so that explains why I exhausted myself trying to find those plates in any link associated with Proust and just could not find a thing. Then I figured they were right there in Tante Leonie's dining room right under my nose, which it turns out they weren't. So this plate in the photo is what he was referring to or were they only a figment of his imagination?

Eugene wrote: "ReemK10 wrote: "Or Odette as a subject of injustice and suffering..."

Read Edith Wharton's House of Mirth where you are privy to the feelings of her protagonist, Lily Bart."

I have read it. My point was not really about trying to feel empathy for Odette as much as it was about Proust wanting us to look at things differently, as in not look at anything ever the same way.

" Perhaps it is too fanciful to suggest that when he did begin to explain himself in his long novel, started a few years after his mother’s death, he had the lovely idea that his mother, by dying, had left an enormous blank for him to fill in. She wanted all the details, she wanted to be spared nothing as she sat on her chair in heaven, her eyes cast down, and he would do anything to please her. "

Maybe he was trying to fill an unsatiable void.

Eugene wrote: "ReemK10 wrote: "... Perhaps, just like music has the ability to touch a chord inside us, so has Odette as an object of suffering and injustice."

But this is not Odette's story; it is the story of ..."

Or Odette as a subject of injustice and insuffering is not allowed to have a voice and we're to look at how we judge her based on what we think about her or what people say about her. Is Proust asking us to rethink our attitudes and our perceptions? Are we to think of her as pink or scarlet?

Eugene wrote: "Charles Swann marries Odette de Crécy and we ask why when he doesn't like her beauty, finds her not intelligent, not educated, her tastes are vulgar; she sees other men, she causes suspicion, jealo..."

I think we have to also keep in mind how the narrator viewed Odette( rather tenderly), when he first met her at his uncle's house and then contrast it with the way Charles Swann views her. Perhaps, just like music has the ability to touch a chord inside us, so has Odette as an object of suffering and injustice. Some people choose to see, and others prefer not to. Maybe instead of opposing Odette as a person, we are to be sympathetic of her.

Phillida wrote: "I'd love to see anyone's response to these portraits of ISOLT characters:
http://resemblancetheportraits.blogsp..."

Well, a gallery of many faces. I find it interesting how the artist tried to reveal the image of each character.
There's a charm to these portraits.

Just googling my time away when I bump into Marcelita again! http://pinterest.com/marcelitaswann/t... I'm beginning to think that Marcelita is a bot. She's amazing!

I was trying to figure out what this Proust chair was.

I wonder if they posted the readings on you tube.

ooh look at what I found: http://artonair.org/series/channel-192

http://www.192books.com/ enter

I found Marcelita:

http://www.scoop.it/t/2013-the-year-o...

I just love that they are reading actual books!

Jeremy wrote: "I couldn't help but notice the phrase: shaken, not stirred."

Lol. Yeah, that bit was for you. When I started writing it, I thought I would just have a little fun with it. I should have spent more time writing it. It was me just being my impulsive self. I wouldn't call it a review either, more of a " my take" on the novel.

Aloha wrote: "I enjoyed your review, Reem! Acclaim? I like posting pretty pictures, not claiming anything. :o)"

Oh don't be modest. I am in awe of all that you know and share with us, as I am of the rest of this group! Thanks to all of you who liked my "review". :)

I was hesitant to post a review in the midst of such an acclaimed group, but here is my take on Swann's Way:

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Jeremy wrote: "written very much like Mrs. Dalloway drifting from character to character using the music as a common thought. Given our knowledge of Woolf's reverence for Proust I had to wonder if this"

That's an absolutely brilliant observation. I think you're right!

Aloha wrote: "Karen wrote: "I do so want to chime in to say how helpful the discussion here is. In fact I think I just did.

Also, I must say that divvying it up into these manageable chunks has been a great aid..."

I just noticed your new photo! Very pretty!

I'm just going to post this here before I forget it, and we can talk about it next week.

There is a line about Swann eating spice cake for health reasons as he is "suffering from ethnic eczema and the Prophets' constipation." ( LD 418) What does this mean?