Booknotes 4.32

In Search of Lost Time volume 7: Time Regained, by Marcel Proust (translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff), published 1927 (translation published 1930), fiction, 529 pages. Done at long last! This one was seedier but it also pulled several threads together and made the novel cohere as a whole — and here I thought Proust was just rambling for three thousand pages! Enjoyed the meditations on art and ageing and memory and time and more (with some very, very long paragraphs), and overall, across all seven volumes, I think I preferred those parts to the actual plot. Long though it was, I’m glad I have now read Proust. It has changed me as a writer and as a reader.

The Years of Lyndon Johnson volume 1: The Path to Power, by Robert A. Caro, published 1982, nonfiction, 1,475 pages. I loved this eminently readable biography, with its deep, deep dive into the details, especially the politics — I inhaled the last 700 pages in just a few days, actually. The section on what it meant to have no electricity in the Hill Country — the difficulty of washing and ironing clothes, canning, etc. — will stick with me for a long time. Very much looking forward to the rest of the series.

Making History, by K. J. Parker, published 2025, fantasy, 99 pages. Enjoyed it, as I generally do with these recent Parker novellas. Interesting core conceit, and the linguistics angle was particularly fun and I wish there’d been even more of that.

The Book-Makers: A History of the Book in Eighteen Lives, by Adam Smyth, published 2024, nonfiction, 434 pages. Loved it! Totally made me want to make books. I liked that it wasn’t just retreading the same old book history ground, though I also love reading about that, and I also liked the biographical approach. Recommended!