Second Life

Current Page: 175
Other books read: 1 (Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader)
Books about to be purchased today at second-hand book sale near here: Think Hay-on-Wye proportions.

If my first post comes a little late, it must surely be out of shame: I am languishing in 3^rd place with a very paltry amount of reading done to date. I am barely two thirds of the way through Combray, but I am now on my Fall Break, so prepare to be overtaken! And yet, it seems strangely appropriate to be taking my time over this book. So far, I found the cake section the least interesting, and I can’t help but say (with one of Alan Bennett’s characters) that it might work with Fuller’s cakes, but not with madeleines. What I do love, though, is Proust’s manifesto on reading around p. 100, and his description of how the novelist’s “happy discovery was to think of substituting for those opaque sections, impenetrable to the human soul, their equivalent in immaterial sections, things, that is, which one’s soul can assimilate”. Bennett’s own novella (a good antidote to the length of ALRDTP) puts it so much better, though: “Books are not about passing the time. They’re about other lives.” In this respect, reading Proust seems like a more interesting version of Second Life (only our avatar here is an asthmatic Frenchman).

I am fast approaching the point of my furthest prior explorations into ALRDTP, so I am looking forward to Swann in Love, even if it has not received entirely favorable reviews from Monsieur G.

In lieu of actually reading, though, I have thought of a future project: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. What do you think?