In Remembrance Of Thing Past - Marcel Proust ( 7 Novels )

I think it will be a great challenge to complete reading 3 Novels (Volume 1 ) and 4 Novels (Volume 2 ). These two volumes are from Wordworth paperback editions, Volume One -translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff, Volume Two - Moncrieff and continued by Stephen Hudson.This edition is very inexpensive, and a budget conscious reader will liked it.
Volume One - 1,360 pages
Volume Two - 1,294 pages

If you read at the rate of 8 pages per calender day, the reader will complete the whole series
within a year . For within 2 years reading plan, the reader will need to read at least 4 pages per calender day.

How long do you need to read the whole series
comprising of 7 novels? To those who have completed the novels, what is a period of time
required by you to finish reading the 7 novels ?
This is not a competition but I am just assessing
the time require to read these novels.This is taken into account inclusive of reading other books.

You are so scaring me, skoobdo. I have the first novel, Du Cote de Chez Swann, sitting on my hallway table waiting to be started.

Are you talking about reading them in French or English?

French. It'll take longer. And the print is tiny, 504 pages of what looks like 8 or 9 point type.

It took prophet about 8 months to read all of it. We have a very old and small print copy of the book too, but in English. In fact, it had to be read with a knife since the pages weren't cut.

Good luck!!

-mistress

You took 8 months to complete 7 volumes of " Remembrance of Things Past " in English is quite a "achievement" I think reading must be one of your favorite pastimes. Proust's sentences are very long-winded ,and I supposed his longest sentence in the novel could easily stretched in a straight line of more than a 4 metres length considering if the prints are of the smallest readable typeset point.The several commas within a single sentence is really helpful to the reader to understand what Proust is really trying to describe or say.An abridged edition of 7 volumes of the novel( about 500 pages )will be very interesting to be written by an "ambitious" writer to give the central or main features or story of the novel. Is there such an abridged version of the novel ? I am still reading the first novel, "Swann's Way" and I discovered that Proust's language is very "elegant and royal" and so far I would gauged that Proust was rather "philosophical" in his writings.

Well, I've screwed up my courage and started. It's going to take awhile. I really hope the action picks up. (Does it?) I can see myself taking years to read all seven. That's not a bad thing. I'll probably need a prolonged break after the first. I grumble, but a few months from now I'll probably be one of those people going on about how "one must read Proust!"

Haha, I'm currently on a "prolonged break" - I've read the first 4 volumes and next on my list is The Captive; The Fugitive. I find it heavy going - I was in desperate need of something, not necessarily lighter, but certainly with a bit more pace!

I read it over the course of a year and a half, mixing in other books as I went along.

But perish the thought of an abridged edition! It would destroy what makes it Proust and what makes it the masterpiece it is.

And #7, citygirl, there isn't a lot of "action" -- it isn't really about plot.

8 pages a day? That's not much reading time; not even a lunch hour worth of reading time. If I read at that pace, I wouldn't remember the beginning by the time I got to page 200. :-) Maybe the answer is to turn off the computer and the tv, find a quiet spot, and read.

LT is great, but it could get us into the habit of spending more time talking about reading than actually reading.

Well, I started The Captive; The Fugitive this morning, and I'm on page 185. I probably benefited from the break - I've come back to it refreshed and appreciative. The Captive is brilliant so far, and now that the Narrator is familiar to me I'm less impatient with him (although I still sort of wish he'd grow a pair, even though that would send most of the book down the drain!).
Anyone else at the same stage?

No. I'm still in the country with relatives and Swann. I'm just excited that some characters have shown up and are having conversations and doing something every once in awhile. I think I'm starting to like it.

That's exactly how I felt. When you get to The Guermantes Way, you suddenly get a few dinner parties and salon conversations. They were very welcome by that stage!

It took me 10 months to read the series (in English), interspersed with other novels. It goes fast, all except volumes 5 & 6 which are pretty dull (but perhaps 'important' in some way I missed).

It's going to take me much longer, since I can't read French, esp. fancy French in very long paragraphs in itsy-bitsy print, nearly as fast as English. I've made it a challenge and am now reading 20 pages a week. I estimate I'll be done with Swann's Way in May. At that time, I will evaluate whether I need to read the others, and when. I do expect that it will get easier, though, with practice. And maybe it will become so fascinating that I'll read more than 20 pages a week. :0

#13 DLSmithies, The parties throughout the novel are, to my way of thinking, the most brilliant parts of a work that is brilliant in many ways.

Oh I absolutely agree. The social scenes are, I think, the best such scenes I've ever read.
From my vantage point of half-way through volume 5, it seems to me that either the book has got much better (highly unlikely) or I've become much better at reading Proust - or, what is more likely, Proust has made me a better reader full stop. I've just got past a bit where the Narrator and Brichot meet the Baron de Charlus on the steps of Mme Verdurin (about to go inside to a party), but you get 30 pages of tangential musing before they actually get in to the party. In volume 1, that would have made me so impatient - but now I'm much more laid back about it - they'll get inside eventually, and in the meantime I love all this musing, that seems to go off to the right and then come back and touch the story again, and then go off to the left, only to return and pick up a bit of conversation again. It's brilliant. He's got me hooked!

Citygirl, I fear I too am turning into one of those people at dinner parties... "One must read Proust!"

I've been enjoying In Search of Lost Time since October 2006. I'm just finishing up The Captive (20 pages!!!) and will start the last book soon. I tend to read something else in between each volume to keep myself fresh. Sort of like that little dish of sorbet to clean the palette in between courses at those fancy restaurants that M. Swann took Odette to...

(Do you have any commentaries to be made
on this book ? )