Within a Budding Grove, Part 1 (Abridged) Audiobook

" Certainly not a book to be read in one sitting. Though a bit worn out by lengthy (and occasionally even repugnant) details about bourgeois Parisian society life in Swann's Way and continued in Within a Budding Grove, I continue to be charmed by Proust's richly evocative and insightful (not to mention artfully phenomenological) narration of his experiences and memories. Proust's view of the world is truly enchanted. "

" I finished this in the waiting room of an Auto-Zone in suburban Pennsylvania on Christmas Day, just like Proust would have wanted it. "

" An exhausting, brilliant journey. "

" This is even better than "Swann's Way." "

" This one won Proust the Prix Goncourt, I imagine to myself because everyone marveled at how well a homo was able to go on and on about girls. Someday I would like to publish a version with all the pronouns changed (back). Then I think it would make a lot more sense to me. Great imagery in this one. "

" I loved this book. Really captures the psyche of a young man entering the world of teenage love: filled with hormones, mistakes, hopes and dreams. A beautiful "gang" of girls enters the world of man/child who has barely been able to leave the home of his mother for a vacation at the ocean. "

" I worked my way through the endless social climbing sections to finally arrive at the beautiful, heartrending and breathtaking falling-in-love-with-Albertine and her friends section. Delight! On to Guermantes Way... "

" The last page is one of the most amazing description I ever seen. "

" "pleasure is like photography. what we take, in the presence of the beloved object, is merely a negative, which we develop later, when we are back home, and have once again found at our disposal that inner darkroom the entrance to which is barred to us so long as we are with other people." "

" This volume has one of my favorite moments in the whole book: M. de Charlus on the beach at Balbec ridiculing M. for his swimming trunks with little anchors on them. Hilarious. Perhaps my favorite volume of the novel. "

" This was the first book on adolescence I've read that wasn't annoying (Catcher in the Rye, I'm looking at you). However, this translation was horrendous. Comparisons with the original French text show how some passages were completely butchered. I would not recommend this edition to anyone. "

" Yet another brilliant volume of Proust's masterpiece. Not as good as Volume I but still, hands down, some of the best literature I have ever had the pleasure of reading. I love love love Proust's analysis of romantic relationships. Seriously, everyone should read Proust. "

" Proust is always full of the deepest insights about our true selves, the ones we keep hidden. "

" Thinking back on Swann, this one is better. More profound, more explicit and yet more abstract. "

" 732 pages of inconsequential. "

" Great writing, packed full of psychological insight and pretty diction. But there's so little at stake; only the main character and his emotions and even those are diluted through the retrospective form, which tries to explain everything and distances the reader from the present moment. "

" It doesn't quite have the interest of the first part, it tends to loose focus after they leave Paris and Mme Swann. Still very beautiful and will be reading the third in a little while. "

" The philosophical and artistic themes were interesting though. "

" Lovely, a moment captured in amber. "

" “...Pleasures are like photographs: in the presence of the person we love, we take only negatives, which we develop later, at home, when we have at our disposal once more our inner dark room, the door of which it is strictly forbidden to open while others are present....” "

" I like it, more when he's not moping over Gilberte. But please, it's wonderful, a whole world. "

" A continuation of the first book with even more passion for the emotional expression of life. "

" second of seven volumes. excellent. merits all the standards applied to it. "

" Más agotador que Por el Camino de Swann, nos interiozamos en la Memoria y su teoría que presenta Proust. Suficiente. "

" In which our hero discovers gurls. "