Zzz

If I’m being 100 percent honest, this book was a harder read than I expected. I don’t know if it’s because I haven’t sat down and read a proper book in a while or if the pacing was extremely slow. I found myself constantly constantly staring at the same paragraph for 15 minutes, restarting it whenever I got distracted. First of all, the whole thing about the goodnight kiss was interesting. My first thought was that this kid was being too overdramatic on whether the mom would come up or not. But I then started to become empathetic towards him since at that age, every problem for him probably seems like the end of the world. I lowkey felt bad since looking back I’ve definitely over-reacted on certain issues when it honestly didn’t warrant that big of a reaction. Another thing I noticed was how slow the book progressed -> which I know the author probably did on purpose. But we spent so much time reading about sleeping, waking up, being super confused, and about childhood rooms. But after I think about it I guess he’s showing us how memories are very abstract with no logical or chronological structure. On top of this I also had a hard time reading the sentences. They were so long to read and grammatically ambiguous. Like I finished a sentence and forgot what the start was talking about. When I for sure thought the sentence would end here, it just kept going. But enough about me complaining. Lets start with Combray, a central part of the book. I understood that the author was trying to emphasize not so much on what happened there, but how the place made him feel. The routine, meals and other more subtle details he remembers tells us how it’s a warmer place that makes him feel safe. There was also the Madeline part which honestly made sense, where a specific taste or smell can unlock memories. I’ve definitely had instances where I smelled something familiar scents such as laundry detergent or a specific perfume which brought me back to my childhood when life was good. Where the biggest worry I had during that time was what food was gonna be at dinner and when the next album for my favourite artist was going to release. Overall, I would say that this was kind of a harder read since I’m getting back into the rhythm of reading but I think as the course progresses I’ll have an easier time concentrating on the pages.