Welcome to Litsy!

Here are my top reads of 2020 with the tagged book standing in for the 7 volumes of #Proust2020 year long read. Interesting reading year for me with several top reads published well before 2020 but these are the ones that will stay with me- most of the many 2020 published books I purchased I did not read- time to get to those in 2021 as apparently I need to stare at a book on my shelves for awhile🤷‍♀️ Anyway these are the top of 2020.

#Proust2020 finished this last month and am almost finished with The Fugitive (they are usually bundled together as V. 5) but have had to go to a new edition as these delux ones only go to this book. In this volume Albertine says “Oh, Marcel” so I guess our narrator is named. I will admit Albertine gets on my nerves but the writing is still brilliant and we are nearing the end of this obsession and I don‘t go to Proust for plot. Stay well!

Aside from perhaps some poetry and Shakespeare, I don‘t think I‘ve read anyone who can capture the singular beauty of an image in time using all senses more gorgeously than Proust. There were moments in this book, especially in Combray and again in Place-Names•The Name where I wanted to dissolve into the scene. I think someone‘s review on Goodreads said it best, that this is an ontological look at love as even as it tore me apart, I liked it.

#Proust2020 This is my happy place and my comfort in these heady days. In Nashville we had a devastating tornado on the 3rd then on the 12th we declared a public health crisis as our venues closed and panic spread even more quickly than the instances of possible exposure. We have been hit a blow but we are strong. I have chosen to immerse myself in the classics and Proust has been a distraction for me. Read for calm and clarity and be loved💖

I wanted to check in with my #Proust2020 fellows. I‘m having trouble concentrating on his long (albeit wonderful) sentences. I‘m stressing a bit over how much isolation to enforce on employees in my department who don‘t get paid if they don‘t work and don‘t have many duties they can do from home. I‘m checking the CDC and other news too often (but can‘t stop myself!) and think I may need some escapist reading. So I may not post on this book much.

“but the spread flowers made it seem a more private pastime even than that, a mysterious one, and seemed to hint that one should apologize for an indiscretion, as one might on inadvertently glimpsing the title of a book lying open and divulging the secret of what she had just read” #Proust2020

“But given that my resolve was unbreakable, given that within 24 hours, inside the empty frame of tomorrow, where everything fitted so perfectly because it was not today, my best intentions would easily take material shape, it was really preferable not to think of beginning things on an evening when I was not quite ready - and of course the following days were to be no better suited to beginning things.” Balthazar agrees. #proust2020

Better for book one maybe, but it‘s still a good snack for evening Proust. #Proust2020

My March TBR includes #Proust2020, #catherbuddyread, #authoramonth, #readwithmrbook, #theprofessor, and #Lent2020 selections. (Four of these are in progress already.) Additionally, I‘ll have a #bookspin pick, and maybe Julius Caesar. I may be overcommitted? 🤷🏻‍♀️