Reading 1001 discussion

Read 2014.
I started reading this with Swan's Way but after that I switched to the audio read by Neville Jason who did an excellent job. It runs to 150 hours of listening. It took the narrator 45 days to complete the unabridged recording. Did I say that the narrator was 78 years old when he recorded this. The only other long complete recordings would be the complete Harry Potter, running 125 hours. (maybe this is not true anymore). The story follows the narrators life as he grows up into an adult and occurs in the Parisian high society. It was written between 1909 to 1922 and published 1913 and 1927. Historically the time period is the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War to the reverberations of the First World War. The writer is the master of the run on sentence. A single sentence can fill a whole page. Mr Jason did an excellent job of reading these long meandering sentences. The narrator also did an excellent job with the many characters. This is a French book read by an English narrator (he states he can't do French Accents) but he develops the characters.

What I didn't like: I had no appreciation for Marcel's love affairs. He was so immature and self centered. A lot of the story centered on homosexuality. Marcel did a lot of observing of other peoples lives.

What I liked; I liked a book about memory and aging. The character of the narrator is introduced to us as a boy who can't stand to be separated from his mother, through time we see him grow old until the last part where he reflects on aging. I thought this last volume was spot on in most ways. I liked seeing the process. As a child, there was not much history even though history is always occurring. As Marcel the narrator ages, he is fascinated by planes and there are zeppelins. The Dreyfus case also occurs and so the book addresses Jewish history and in the end of the book there is the intro of World War I.

I gave the book 3 stars and I don't see yet where reading or not reading this book is of any importance other than bragging rights but a lot of times with books like this, that opinion changes with remembrance of things past.

I've already posted more thoughts on this in my personal thread for this as I read this book as my 'alternate annual' this year but in short:

I loved this book! so little really happens for the length of it lol, but the way it satires high society, and explores the role of the construction of others and the social world in our idea of ourselves and collective memory was fantastic. I found it a joy to listen to over the months. I gave it 5 stars.