I'm listening to the cricket and they calculating run rates (we may be about to lose, though not as abjectly as last time).
It is also occuring to me that in the general free for all that is now the Proustathon, we have not really caclulated days. In fact only Andrew and I have been doing this. Given that some of us are chronically anal, this won't do. I suggest we recommence. Simple scoring rules: count the days reading Proust continuously between start of each volume and completion. The start is deemed to be either when you start or when we all decide to do so. The inital post on this here.
I have reconstructed the leaderboard based on some dodgy assumptions about Elliot
Elliot: 4 vols, 93 days (15,37, 24,17)
Will: 3 vols, 74 (23,7,44)
Andrew: 3 vols, 109 (16,64,29)
Alexis: 2 vols, 112 (19, 48,45*)
Elliot, I may have overstated your days, I have basically worked from continuous reading of Proust between your 30 days ish on 30th Dec to final completion of vol 4 on the 10th Feb (Sunday last).
Interestingly, my previous assumption that we would get to completion by 100 days has already proved woefully optimistic. Similarly, my assumption that we would be finishing vol 6 by June now looks only realistic for Elliot.
Apologies for anality, but would you all expect any less. I'll keep updating.
Sometime, late of an evening in March 2007, a regrettable decision was taken. As a consequence of this decision three friends, Dr Andrew Murray, Mr William Garrood (Member of Surrey CCC) and Dr Alexis Haynes would competitively read Marcel Proust's masterpiece A La Recherche du Temps Perdu. The aforementioned Proustanauts were later joined in their endeavour by Mr Elliot Smith, who, aided in part by a bout of pneumonia, promptly overtook them all. The saga continues...
2 comments:
100 days (17 days per volume) was always going to be pushing it. My best tally of 16 days was for the first and shortest volume so far, and I am unlikely to repeat this for any other with the possible exception of Time Regained. I think we're on for a July finish though - 5 months taken for the first half of the novel, and with the second half likely to benefit from momentum. Plus, we (you, Elliot and I anyway) are now almost certainly going to finish it, largely due to mutual support and good old-fashioned pig-headedness, the underlying purpose of this whole affair after all, and something that may not have happened had we been left to our own devices. In that sense there is still cause for great optimism.
On a Proustian movie-evening note, inspired by Elliot's amusing wise crack, I am very much in favour of a double bill of The Captive (high-brow Proust adaptation) and The Fugitive (Harrison Ford action romp)... I do, however, draw the line at non-Proust-inspired films entitled Sodom & Gomorrah.
Genius film night idea. We should pair it with recipes from the book that Alain de Botton insists we shouldn't buy.
Will we can date quite specifically from that night we met for a drink in Balls Brothers - I started in earnest v soon after.
I cannot, of course, remember when that was.
And it's been a resounding success for me so far - I know for a fact I would have thrown in the towel before now if you chaps hadn't been keeping me honest.
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