what I’ve been reading lately:
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The rest of Sodom and Gomorrah
The rest of Sodom and Gomorrah, after the long middle section, carries on swimmingly: it’s that usual Proustian mix of beautiful observed detail plus funny observed society-life plus jealousy and falling in and out of love and acting more or less foolish about it. There is much about sleep and time and memory and habit:…
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Sodom and Gomorrah, still
“The faithful” of the “little clan,” as the regulars at the Verdurins’ Wednesday-evening salon are known, have shifted a bit over the years since Odette and Swann were part of the group, and even those that are familiar faces from Swann’s Way may have changed a bit..but not too much. Dr. Cottard is no longer…
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More of Sodom and Gomorrah
To pick up where I left off, in the middle of Part Two: “The Intermittencies of the Heart” is sad and sweet and lovely. In this section, our narrator arrives at Balbec and suddenly, a year after the fact, the sorrow and loss of his grandmother’s death are real to him, start affecting him in…
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Proust, in progress
In the past I’ve only written here when I’ve finished reading something, but Proust is such slow going, and there is so much I want to write about, and this volume is so different from one section to the next. So here goes. Part One: Sodom and Gomorrah is, as you might guess, gay gay…
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The Thirteenth Tale by Diane SetterfieldAtria Books, 2006
This is a story of neo-Gothic intrigue, the story of a decaying pile of a mansion and the falling-apart family that lives in it, a story of reading and writing. In the first few pages I decided it had a few things going for it: the reference to The Water Babies (yay classic kids’ books)…
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Wanderlust: A History of Walking (new edition) by Rebecca SolnitVerso, 2006 (originally Viking, 2000)
This book is really smart and satisfying; it’s an excellent blend of the personal and the historical and the philosophical. Early in the book, Solnit talks about walking’s place—or lack thereof—in our daily lives: walking as part of “the time inbetween,” “the time of walking to or from a place” as “uncluttered time,” appreciated by…
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The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. RowlingChildren’s High Level Group, 2008
These short stories are wizarding-world fables, “translated from the ancient runes by Hermione Granger” (though sadly, without any kind of textual commentary in Hermione’s voice), with “commentary by Albus Dumbledore.” The commentary, with its amusing footnotes and asides, is the best part of the book, though the stories themselves aren’t bad either. I liked “The…
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By Hook or By Crook: A Journey in Search of English by David CrystalOverlook Press, 2008 (originally HarperCollins, 2007)
This book had me grinning from the preface, which quotes HV Morton (“I have gone round England like a magpie picking up any bright thing that pleased me.”) and calls this book a “linguistic travelogue” (pp xii, xiii). The first chapter continued along excitingly: I’d heard of the Welsh town with the longest place-name in…
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Rock Crystal by Adalbert Stiftertrans. Elizabeth Mayer and Marianne MooreNew York Review Books, 2008 (originally Pantheon, 1945)
I thought I was in the mood for a wintry book, for prose with edges like mountains and ice, but maybe I wasn’t, or maybe I was but this wasn’t it. Having read W.H. Auden’s introduction, I knew the ending already, so I missed out on the “almost unendurable suspense” the back cover copy promises.…