How Proust Can Change Your Life

Very much looking forward to starting Proust now, thanks in part to this excellent book. Well worth reading even if you never intend to actually read Proust.

If you have considered reading this book, you are probably aware of who Proust is, but I honestly knew little about him before reading this book. I've been on a French author reading kick for, oh, five months or so, and I've had this book in my TBR for quite some time, so this was a must-read for me.

The question is, then, How? And, importantly, Can He?

The answers read like a how-to-be-happier self-help guide, but this book is not of that genre; this book is actually a book of literary criticism, oddly. Reading Proust can change your life by teaching you to focus on slowing down, relishing, thinking, reading thoughtfully, and your senses.

That's the How. Now for the Can He.

I say yes. Of course I do. I am a librarian, for goodness sake. Of course Proust can change your life. I'm of the opinion that all books can and do.

This should have ideally been a podcast rather than a book. In ‘98 it was not an option to explore different premises where digests were the main source of time pass read. In today's context, this would not interest common readers like me, but given the pandemic as a constraint, any second-hand book can deliberately provide some ancient knowledge that a millennial may not inculcate. Mostly I was eager to learn what Marcel Proust had to say after page 48 than Botton, sarcasm which the narrator had to impart to the audience did not work on me as I was not very keen to read this book. Highly recommended for people who really know about Proust, because I was not aware who he was until I got a parcel of books from a second-hand eCommerce website.