Other Stories

The Proust Book Group

Academic Friend and I are taking on a mighty challenge: Proust.

Proust is scary. We all know he ended up in a padded cell, but the question is, will we? It's time to find out. In Search of Lost Time has even some academic quaking in their boots, but really, is there any reason why the two of us can't read it and get something out of it? We are educated women, Academic Friend is, well, nearly an Academic, give or take a viva. And so, we have decided to start The Proust Book Group! We shall be setting ourselves deadlines to read parts of the text, then we shall get together over a beer or three to see if we can't unravel the beast a little. We both now have our copies of volume one, Swann's Way, and shall shortly be starting in earnest.

Who knows, perhaps soon we'll be able to take part in our own All-England/Scotland/America Summarise Proust Competition...

Reading Dangerously: A Dilemma

I have a dilemma. Perhaps you lot can help me out.

As regular readers will know, I recently decided to embark of the 'My Year of Reading Dangerously' challenge. The point is to pick up books that scare you a bit and/or you wouldn't normally choose to read. I recently picked up Ice by Anna Kavan and began it in earnest. It fulfilled the 'independent publisher' category of the challenge, and it is 'slipstream' literature (according to the foreword), which is a genre that I find a little off-putting.

For what it's worth, apparently 'slipstream' literature means that there is a hefty dollop of suspension of disbelief required when reading; time frames jump, characters appear and disappear, realism is not necessarily on the menu.

Thing is, three chapters in and I'm struggling. I don't know what to do. Do I resign gracefully, or do I persevere through to the end? It's a short book - only 130 or so pages - but at the moment that feels epic. Normally I wouldn't think twice about putting down a book that I wasn't particularly enjoying but I signed up for the challenge... am I failing it if I don't finish the book? Or isn't the spirit of the challenge that I try new things, with the understanding that perhaps all those new things just won't be for me? What does the blogosphere think?