Page: 302
Pages read since last post: 216
Days reading Proust: 66* (23,7,36*)
References to Proust found in the new Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah band CD: 2
Books read in January: 3 (Gibbon, vols 1 & 2, I am Legend)
This is the fewest books read in a month since records began (August 2005). I am appalled at my own laziness.
Anyway, I have finally gotten on with this. And I must confess I really don't see how you can all be finding the salon scenes dull. This one really is fab, though I grant a bit long (hardly a unique comment in this novel). I'm also loving the historical conext and the prince of Borodine really makes one think about the strange survival of the Napoleonic and Bourbon French nobility side by side. It would make a fascinating book. And the Dreyfusard controversy is always interesting. I'm reading J'Accuse next (which at this rate will be March) - at least it's short.
On a lighter note, the new Bonzo Dog Doo-dah band album has two references to Proust, in Hawkeye the Gnu (where a Moose eats a copy in the library), and Salmon Proust (which adds to the collection of related recipes in other texts).
I have now broken the back of Gibbon and can look forward to volume 3, which, rather impressively, is the only one that is directly relevant to my doctorate.
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8 comments:
Good to see you're making sterling progress at last, and thanks for the tip re: J'Accuse - shall follow it up forthwith. Superbly eclectic references to those Doo-Dah chaps too.
I made contact with M. Haynes last week. As expected, he had not, at that stage, picked the bugger up. My joy at imminently retaking 3rd place has been tempered by the realistion that it may be some time before we resume.
We should sort the placing out when I complete. I think El will take first after this. BUt at the moment only you and I are counting.
We need not wait for Elliot. Your earlier post suggests that a one month gap from the first completion is all that is needed. Laggards simply continue to count those days as the previous not the current volume.
I am ambitiously expecting that I should knock it off by the end of the weekend.
I mean Alexis obviously. Not Elliot (for the waiting)
Yes, true. Perhaps we should propose March 1st as the new restart date. It'll give us all a much-needed break at the halfway stage (actually 49.49% -way stage but who's counting?). We'd be looking at an Easter finish for vol. 4 then. Volume 5 will be a slog, taking most of next term I expect, but the < 500 pages of volume 6 can be bashed either side of our holiday (remembering the Proust truce).
These are all wildly optimistic predictions, of course. I do wonder how long it might have taken us were we not reading it collectively. I suspect that I for one would have capitulated before now.
Then we can have a Proust party. I am definitely buying the Belle Epoque cookbook and we can converse smugly about how we have read it. In an ideal world, we could finish before Alexis is over here. Let's target mid July. I am going over to France then so I could finish the last pages on Bastille day.
Excellent plan - though we should contract out the actual cooking. I have purchased DVDs of the movies Time Regained (2000) with John Malkovich playing Charlus, and a 2001 adaptation of The Captive. So the entertainment is likewise sorted.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Time-Regained-Catherine-Deneuve/dp/B00004U8MJ/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=gateway&qid=1202336175&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Captive-Stanislas-Merhar/dp/B00005NZHR/ref=pd_bxgy_w_h__img_b?ie=UTF8&qid=1202336175&sr=8-1
... and someone needs get hold of the original cast recording of the musical "My Life with Albertine", featuring such lyrical gems as:
"Oh we are so happeee...
At Balbec-by-the-sea"
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