Welcome to Litsy!

I'm making some headway with #Proust2026 and this passage knocked me absolutely flat today. It's tough reading, no doubt, but I'm approaching it like written Pointillism: I'm often in the middle of a bunch of dots, but at certain moments, the whole picture washes over me. I'm doing 10 pages at a time, and some days I sigh in frustration and have to remind myself of the rewards of slow diligence. But today? Today I was moved to tears.

The most comforting sleep for me is when I have showered and ready to leave, school had been suddenly canceled. I put on pajamas, wrap myself with the covers, lay down my head. I may or may not have a book. I'm so comfortable and that is the only time I truly feel pure hygge. In my middle age, I find i sleep better when the sun is up. During the days following Helene, I would just lay on top of the covers, it was hellishly hot,

Guys, I am struggling to keep up! I have the worst headache from the Siniusitis I developed from my grandkids being sick over Christmas!! I am so afraid I am going to fall behind... Page 4 of 66 for the week. I must have a large print because my numbers are off from what others have.

Any suggestions?
#proust2026.

Food for thought…

#PROUST2026 @TheBookHippie

First goal met in #Proust2026! 🎉🎉🎉

And in honor of #haikuhive and Proust‘s iconic madeleine:

Warm crumb in tea steam
A small shell opens the past
Time breathes, teasing me

repost for @TheBookHippie:

Schedule reminder #PROUST2026

Swann‘s Way for JAN & FEB

Reading 10 pages a day and @BookishMarginalia has a written schedule posted.
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repost for @BookishMarginalia:

I‘ve been planning my #Proust2026 reading for Jan/Feb. this is the #SwannsWaySchedule thus far!

(I am aiming for around 10 pages a day most (but not all) days, so the schedule takes that into account. And there are no chapters, because Proust! 🤪)

#Proust2026 underway!

Reading the first 10 pages for #Proust2026 at a local pond.

This is a book to be savored, because it‘s about sensations, not plot, so 10 pages seems like the right amount at one time. #SwannsWaySchedule

Photo by @WanderingBookaneer

Happy 2026, and here we go! I've attempted In Search of Lost Time before but never completed it. Here's hoping that #Proust2026 keeps me on track! #CurrentlyReading

Volume 1 is a reread for me. I started this with a group here in 2020, but found pandemic stress did not allow for the concentration required to complete all the volumes. May 2026 be easier on us all. #proust2026

I‘ve been planning my #Proust2026 reading for Jan/Feb. this is the #ReadingPlan thus far! #SwannsWaySchedule

(I am aiming for around 10 pages a day most (but not all) days. I am not great with consistency, so the schedule takes that into account. And there are no chapters, because Proust! 🤪)

repost for @TheBookHippie

#PROUST2026 Reading Schedule

Let me know if you want to be tagged 🙃

Editions I‘m using https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/series/SLT/in-search-of-lost-time/

I‘m apprehensive- but I want to read these and I need a 2026 goal 🫣

I‘ll try to post helpful hints as we go, check-ins etc…After each book I will try to have a small discussion as well.

All welcome to join the #BuddyRead.

Time to tackle this giant 📚💪🏻

I finally made it to Pere Lachaise today, and Proust was my #1 dead person I had to visit. The map I found online turned out to be wildly unspecific (right quadrant, wrong position for EVERYONE), but I ran into a nice lady who offered me help and steered me right to him.

Alas, I never did find Sarah Bernhardt, but I also said hi to Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison. The latter is so rowdy they‘ve got metal event barriers around him.

I‘ve always been intimidated by Proust and was thrilled to read this one with a few others. Proust has a meandering way of exploring the world around him. He‘s not rushed and his sentences are long and indulgent. That can feel exhausting at times, but then you come across a line so beautiful and achingly relatable that it stops you in your tracks. I‘m not ready to tackle the rest of the series, but maybe one book a year would be the right speed.

In February and March, I‘m reading Swann‘s Way with a few bookish friends. I love hearing everyone‘s comments each week. We are reading the Lydia Davis translation and just made it to the halfway point. Proust‘s meandering thoughts are beautiful, but exhausting at times. I love having a chance to savor his words and reflect on them each week instead of rushing through it.

Nostalgia and run-on sentences.
Recollections of a sad, anxious boy, his memories and accounts of people, often miserable, that he grew up around, scandals that are only scandals due to the attitudes of the time. Very little of the protagonist emerges amongst detailed descriptions of the scenery (nature and architecture), a few books, even place names, aside from his ambition to become a writer and the start of one love affair, 1/?

💅🏻

Monocle kink? 🧐

#TuesdayTunes @TieDyeDude
This was one of my favourite '80s albums (1984), the only LP by Swans Way which spawned one Top 20 single, "Soul Train", so a definitive one-hit wonder, but brilliantly so. Mixing jazz, orchestral and baroque pop, it's Ultra Cool! Reconnecting with it over the past week I think it still really stands up as a great record. Definitely back on my play rotation.
You Tube album link in comments ?

That moment when you pause to listen, realize it's raining... 🌧️😌 Love how he describes the succession of sounds.

Lost in reading....🥰

Proust always sounds so regretful. I can't tell why he looks on the past with so much sadness for time past. Surely these are happy memories?

This was great the first time around, much better the second.

I love Proust and his cool sentences, as well as his observations. This is the type of thing you have to read slow to absorb it, and understand the full depth of the ideas he‘s conveying. It‘s definitely not something to just run through so as to be able to say you read it.

Basically, the text gives back what you put into it. This is usually the case but even more so for Proust imo.

This is an incredible description of what it feels like when clouds are chased away

This is beautiful, evocative writing. I've said it before but it bears repeating - Proust might go on a bit at times( a lot, actually) but there are passages of such beauty, and so vividly described, that it is definitely worth reading

I had no greater desire than to see a storm at sea, not so much because it would be a beautiful spectacle as because it would be a moment of nature‘s real life unveiled; or rather for me there were no beautiful spectacles except the ones which I knew were not artificially contrived for my pleasure, but were necessary, unchangeable—the beauties of landscapes or of great art.

Makes ya think, don‘t it?…

one thing love and death have in common, more than those vague resemblances people are always talking about, is that they make us question more deeply, for fear that its reality will slip away from us, the mystery of personality.

"The places we have known do not belong solely to the world of space in which we situate them for our greater convenience . . . The memory of a certain image is only regret for a certain moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fleeting, alas, as the years."
Thus ends Volume 1. I am in love. ?

Even before seeing Odette there, even if he did not manage to see her, what happiness it would give him to step on that earth where, not knowing the exact location, at any given moment, of her presence, he would feel palpitating everywhere the possibility of her sudden appearance….

Zipporah, Jethro's's daughter -- a small detail from Botticelli's "The Trials of Moses."
I looked up this painting (like many Proust readers before me) because Swann believes Odette resembles this portrait, which helps him fall in love with her.
(It would seem that is not a great reason to fall in love with someone, or might not lead to lasting happiness.)
I'm about halfway through Volume 1. Still enjoying my #morningswithMarcel

This is such lovely writing

That's quite lovely

And so it begins....mornings sith Marcel.

This is such a stunning sentence

Whether it is that the faith which creates has dried up in me, or that reality takes shape in memory alone, the flowers I am shown today for the first time do not seem to me to be real flowers.

Even I preferred cream cheese when it was pink, when I had been allowed to crush strawberries in it. And these flowers had chosen precisely the color of an edible thing, or of a delicate embellishment to an outfit … one of those colors which, because they offer children the reason for their superiority, seem most obviously beautiful to the eyes of children, and for that reason will always seem more vivid and more natural to them[.]

Did Swann just invent air quotes?!

"After luncheon the sun, conscious that it was Saturday, would blaze an hour longer in the zenith,..." - Marcel Proust, Swann's Way

What's your favourite weekend reading place? Here's Woman Reading by American Impressionist painter Childe Hassam (1859-1935) #BooksInArt

#books #bookquotes #weekendreads #weekendreading #bibliophile #amreading #booktime