Page: 1
Pages read since last post: 0
Days elapsed reading Proust: 32 (23, 7,2*)
Books read since last Post: 3 (E.Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vols 5 & 6, A. de Botton, How Proust can change your life)
On reflection, it was a mistake starting Gibbon. It means that having spend December grinding ever more slowly through the Decline and Fall, I now have to do the same thing again with Proust without any kind of break. It's not as if I've finished either, having only read half of Gibbon (in the wrong order). So I am now left with seven hefty volumes staring at me from my selves, all written by the same two, long dead, excessively prolix, literary figures. At least they are not on the same shelf, no categorisation system I can think of would put them together.
I have a more general reluctance to return to Proust though, which is a result of having left it for so long. Part of the joy of MP is that immersion that comes from heavy reading. As one recedes from the reading itself, I find that I forget why he needed so long to tell us anything in the first place. So it is with some trepidation I approach vol. 3. I also have an overflowing new acquisitions bookcase as a result of Christmas, which contains much that is tempting and short (this is a relative term), although the two may be linked.
One never knows though and I may be sucked back in very effectively, but I do not anticipate rapid progress.
Wednesday, 2 January 2008
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