From the Bookshelf of The Year of Reading Proust…

Swann’s Way (In Search of Lost Time, #1)

Marcel Proust

Start date: January 1, 2013

Finish date: February 24, 2013

Discussion: Swann's Way, vol. 1

Why we're reading this: Alternate translation.
[close] Alternate translation.

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Swann's Way, vol. 1

Through Sunday, 6 Jan.: Swann's Way
By Kris · 373 posts · 819 views

last updated Mar 29, 2025 09:41AM

Through Sunday, 24 Feb.: Swann's Way
By Kris · 142 posts · 381 views

last updated Feb 27, 2015 10:45AM

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What Members Thought

Dec 15, 2007 Paul Wilner rated it it was amazing

Ah, Marcel...
Beautiful translation, too.

4 likes · Like · see review

Dec 28, 2012 Will rated it it was amazing

#Proust2013 is officially underway, I finished Swann's Way!!!!!!!!!

I don't know how to review this, so I won't. But I typed out 10+ pages of quotes from this, and I could have copied out the entire book. Because every sentence in this book is perfect. I wish it wasn't true, because that's what I'd heard about it, but it's true. Proust has his thing, and it's to describe in the most mind-expanding detail every piece of minutiae in every scene, and it is both gorgeous and entertaining, even when " ...more

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Dec 24, 2020 Vicky rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: on-love, favorites, on-writing, french, novel, on-reading, own-pre-konmari

A novel I never thought I would have interest in reading, then once I did have it in 2013—since it is Anaïs Nin's favorite novel and right in time for the 100th anniversary of its publication—I never thought I would be able to finish this first volume because I kept abandoning it 3-4x between pages 70-100. The narrator as a young boy describing in slow detail the whole process of going to bed without a goodnight kiss from his mother was really hard to get through, but arriving to "Swann in Love, ...more

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Jan 30, 2013 M rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-books, library, read-in-2013

Swann's Way starts with the famous sentence "Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure" (For a long time, I went to bed early) and goes on for pages about the act of going to bed, memories of chilhood bed rituals and that split-second feeling of disorientation one feels when waking up, accentuated by being away from home. Elegantly, Proust has just introduced many of the themes he is going to develop in his larger-than-life novel - memory (involuntary vs. voluntary), habit, sensorial experienc ...more

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Aug 29, 2013 John Beck rated it really liked it

Shelves: reviewed, fiction

http://andalittlewine.blogspot.com/20...

It's been nearly 3 weeks since I finished the first book of Marcel Proust's masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time. I enjoyed Swann's Way, but I did not love it. The first 100 pages or so were a slog.

When I rail against the Victorians, I often forget that the early 20th century was still chock full of Victorian values and ideals... and ideas about what makes good writing.

I suppose what separates the great works of the 19th century from those of the 21st centu ...more

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