I am worming my way through Proust. I don’t think I’ll finish this second book by the end of the month. No hurry. It’s a year long process. I want to write a full length post about The Unbearable Lightness of Being. It is very interesting and I want to do it justice. I love Tereza and Tomas’s weaknesses. I love how they get killed off in the middle of the book only to have their story continued until the end. I love Tereza’s dreams about Tomas wanting her dead. I love Sabina’s bowler hat and the engineer who may have been the secret police. I love the fact that Tereza was reading Anna Karenina when she met Tomas and that her dog is named Karenin. Only Milan Kundera can make betrayal and heartache so readable and lovely.
As for Proust, here are some passages that I like!
“When our wish to be touched by nature or art is prompted by the hope of a grandiose revelation, we are loath to let it be replaced by lesser impressions, which might mislead us as to the true value of Beauty.”
The digression about the Vinteuil sonata:
“Because it was only in successive stages that I could love what the sonata brought to me, I was never able to possess it in its entirety-it was an image of life. But the great works of art are also less of a disappointment than life, in that their best parts do not come first.”
On time:
“The time we have to spend each day is elastic: it is stretched by the passions we feel; it is shrunk by those we inspire; and all of it is filled by habit.”
Sunrises:
“Sunrises are a feature of long train journeys, like hard-boiled eggs, illustrated papers, packs of cards, rivers with boats straining forward but making no progress.”
La la di da da da… love love love my proust.
I am also obsessed right now with Elvis Perkin’s “All the Night Without Love.” The lyrics make no sense. Something about drive thrus, gotmilk.com, and athletic insoles that get no love!
Peabody=more typing, some cataloging!
This is my TBR stack. Diaz should be next, Pynchon and Tolstoy are so long! Pamuk is for a lazy day and The Road for sure…soon. Bowl of Cherries was started and put aside and the rest are Bookins arrivals. All need to be read before new ones are bought, borrowed, or added to the list… but such is the life of a book addict. My TBR list is taking shape as we speak. 
An update is in order for the reading of this last week of January. It has been a big reading month, slowing down toward the latter, but the TBR list keeps growing. All I can hope for is just to keep up as much as I can. Right now, I am head on into the second book of In Search of Lost Time, “In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower” and keeping my bathtub company with The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Both are fabulous in completely different ways. I have so many books in this house to read. I also treated myself to something today, Bookmarks magazine. Hopefully, more things will be recommended. I am attempting to put my books into librarything.com. It would take forever, but I’ll try to put it up here sometime soon. Also a comprehensive TBR list, a goal list very soon. Bye bye for now. 
