Gini’s Reviews > Remembrance Of Things Past or In Search Of Lost Time > Status Update

The current section I'm reading is the long way around to say what I think has been attributed to Hemingway. "There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed"

In the home stretch now. I can do it! Book 7 Time Regained. The edition I'm reading has a different translator for this book. Stephen Hudson, the pseudonym of Sydney Schiff. Just a bit of trivia, but the change did make a difference for me. But, the home stretch is still the best of the lot. And a time to bid farewell to all the characters. Almost sad after all the time we've been together.

Ah, much better now. Recovering or recovered from Albertina episode. More characters reappearing. And we're in Venice now.

OK. I'm getting back into this again. The pace and all the observations. The social intrigues and manipulation. Takes a while. This event with Morel and ensemble performing takes nearly as long to read as the event itself lasted. Or seems so. Think I can do this now.

Now I remember why I put this down. The unending chatter of the social sets and rules and who's not really who. Blah blah blah. It's bound to run out soon I keep thinking.

Picked this up again after giving it a rest. Have to wonder why, but I'll stick with it for a while. Apparently commas were his favorite punctuation mark. Currently rambling around about Charlus and Morel's associations while standing on a doorstep waiting to be admitted to an engagement.

Hmm. Not much progress here. Might be time to set it aside for a while. Or get serious about it. The first suits me better. Very weary of all the musings and navel gazing. Send Albertine home and get out with life! Can't remember from prior read how that goes. For now it's a giant yawn.

Not surprised at finish of the Cities or chapter 4. Yes, I'd read this before but remembered very little of it. And that vacillation at the end...yeah this is not my favorite part of this saga. Growing up is hard for our narrator. But that part is done, and I can go on now.

Well, grandmother has died. The scene all around that event described the event and reactions thoroughly. Not very pleasant reading, but well done.

At the theater for a presentation of Phedre, his second time several years apart. Musings about art, presentation, appreciation dissolves into admiring the occupants of the boxes. He glides from one to another and the reader trails along behind him. Or this reader does. Glad I decided to revisit this book.