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Never Read Passively

Currently reading

The Art of Fiction: A Guide for Writers and Readers
Ayn Rand, Tore Boeckmann, Leonard Peikoff
The Name of the Rose
Umberto Eco
Ghostwritten
David Mitchell
To the Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Edward Gibbon, Daniel J. Boorstin, Gian Battista Piranesi, Hans-Friedrich Mueller
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
Douglas R. Hofstadter
Perfect Wrong Note - Learning to Trust Your Musical Self
William Westney
The Prince
Niccolò Machiavelli
The Varieties of Religious Experience
William James
Twenty Questions: An Introduction to Philosophy
G. Lee Bowie, Robert C. Solomon

Swann's Way: In Search of Lost Time

Swann's Way - Marcel Proust, Lydia Davis 2013 update to 2008 review.Five years of time and reading has given me a very different perspective on this Proust. I'll re-visit this review after reading the book again, which will probably happen after I slowly work my way through the other books in the series. At this point I've finished In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower and I'm 1/4th through The Guermantes Way.------I guess I'm going to be in the minority giving this book a 2 star rating, but I can't bring myself to go higher. It's true, the language is beautiful, the writing is impeccable and there are some really powerful insights into human nature but the story was just so. extremely. boring. It tries to be a love story but never makes it past infatuation. Proust goes on and on with memories and reflections and introspection but the plot barely moves. I much prefer Tolstoy's mix of great insight into human nature interwoven with a plot that pulls you in and keeps you interested in the characters. Skip this and read (or re-read) Anna Karenina.