My long journey in Proustland

I've just finished Part I Du côté de Guermantes and started Part II. Guermantes is the third volume of À la recherche du temps perdu which I've been reading for years now (not like two years, more like six or seven). It really feels interminable, and in the last year (by which I mean, during the time it took me to read Part I of my current volume) I started thinking maybe I wasn't into it anymore, or that at least I might switch to reading it in English (which would be less like hard work, more like entertainment). Du côté de chez Swann is one of the best things ever created on earth, but all this talk in the last few hundred pages about different levels of nobility and who is too good to show up at who's tea parties and so on, it was starting to feel like it wasn't my thing. Now though, it's back to the domestic scene, with his grandmother having fallen ill, and it's amazing again. He's really the best writer of prose ever.

At this rate, I'll be finished just before my fortieth birthday.