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.

Find A Copy At

Libraries

Group Discussions About This Book

Showing 2 of 10 topics — 2,601 comments total

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

showing 1 of 1 topics view all »

What Members Thought

Feb 19, 2013 Darwin8u rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

“One cannot change, that is to say become a different person, while continuing to acquiesce to the feelings of the person one has ceased to be.”
― Marcel Proust, Swann's Way

description

For years, I have put off reading Proust mainly because the size of In Search of Lost Time/Remembrance of Things Past seemed intimidating. Now, having finished Swann's Way: Vol 1. (440 pages of the 3365 total pages), I feel a compelling need to keep going.

This novel is preoccupied with all the details that surround time, des ...more

128 likes · Like · see review

Jun 02, 2020 Paige Clifton-Steele rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

Nothing prepares you for Proust except Proust. Reading Swann’s Way the first time over 10 years ago taught me how to read Swann’s Way. It’s like a new way of thinking and observing the world that begins with the tiniest grain of recognition and unfolds, unfolds, unfolds again. He has the capacity to take moments so minute, so delicate that you hardly clock their passing and making them visible. Like some hallucinogens, he makes the workings of your mind apparent to you: a feeling you had in chil ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Dec 07, 2012 Anthea Carson rated it it was amazing

It was as if this book was what caused me to experience my own memories for the first time. I was 18, and my father had bought me an amtrack ticket to tour around the country alone, and he gave me this book and said, "It is time for you to read Remembrance of Things Past." And I was not disappointed. I will, in much the spirit of the book itself, always associate this book with that train ride around the United States. I would most likely have never written the way I have, had it not been for th ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Jan 29, 2013 Chris Walker rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I have glanced at Swann's Way from time to time and been put off by the mind-numbing slabs of text on each page and the fact that the narrator doesn't seem to have even gotten out of bed in the first chapter. (Plus the rumour that the book stretches over several volumes in this fashion). I have managed to worm my way into Henry James in the past and ended up loving everything he wrote, but I think my patience levels have declined in recent years. So I was pleased to find an audio book to get me ...more

1 like · Like · see review