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Summary: i am no literary scholar and....
Review: ...and i have not even finished even the first volume of this dauntingly sprawling work known as a la recherche du temps perdu, but i know what i like and i have just fallen in love with swann's way. yes, it would be silly to deny that proust does like to go on and on quite prodigiously but what a sumptuous journey! i feel almost wicked indulging in proust - and what is his writing if not supremely self-indulgent - but i find myself continually redeemed by his carefully and extensively detailed insights which unfold and arise so naturally, almost indiscernibly, from the complex interplay of memory, sensation and emotion. as i read, often i find myself either smiling with joy or on the verge of tears, moved by the beauty with which proust reveals simple, almost mundane, truths, which are all the more profound by virtue of their mundanity. in any case, i don't think it's fair to banish so bitterly all those for whom this book is a thing of joy and pleasure to the realm of the pretentious. besides, i prefer to think of myself as voluptuous, not pretentious (sniff, sniff) here's a tip: forget profundity if you must and just revel in the gorgeous details of his recollections, his attempts to recapture the past through memory. this is not a book to rush, you must let it's luxuriant and gauzy veil envelop you.
Rating: 
Summary: A String of Pearls fit for a Select Few
Review: It is a travesty that anyone could claim to find this masterpiece "boring." Proust's novel belongs in that select pantheon of books that truly deserved to be called Classics. If you ain't part of the intellectualy elite, this book ain't for you. A finer study of human nature (amongst other things) one will not find anywhere. That is why I give this book 5 stars.
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Summary: One of the Great Novels of the Century
Review: I'm glad that this book has generated so much controversy, even if most of it has been the asinine comments of one or two people who are clearly incapable of expressing original views. For most of us, repeating someone's comments but replacing positives with negatives was something we got over in third grade. It hardly qualifies as valid criticism. Swann's Way is undoubtedly a work of genius. Frankly, if you don't agree, it says more about you than it does Proust.
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Summary: This book miseducates the reader's soul
Review: How can any work be so dreary and unpoetic and at once so imprecise and unanalytical? The answer: Read Proust! While failing in describing the sensory world with hallucinatory clarity and beauty, Proust simultaneously presents his characters (all quite forgettable) as if under a broken microscope, not revealing in any luminous detail the complex interplay of memory, desire, conscience and habit in their divided hearts. The narrator (a young and bitter Proust, more or less) divides the work roughly between a nostalgic portrait of childhood summers at his family's country home, and a morbidly funny record of an older friend's humiliating courtship of a notorious prostitute and subsequent crucifixion by jealousy. Proust does not have a cruel wit, supernatural eye for paradox,taste for the most delicious ironies or above all an all-encompassing wisdom that borders on the mystical - forgiving nothing, forgetting all.
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Summary: An attempt at greatness, but falls short.
Review: More trouble than it's worth. Try Joyce instead
Rating:
Summary: Almost unbearable
Review: I consider myself to be a lover of literature and a well read person. What is the deal with Swann's Way?
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Summary: There's no finer way to spend time than reading this book.
Review: Not only is this the greatest book ever written (and I mean it), but this is the finest translation of it into English. There's no point in attempting to describe its pleasures, or the depth of them. Please, if you haven't read Swann's way (and the entire In Search Of/Remembrance) do so. If you have, read it again. Thank God for the printing press, if only for this book; it's one of the few things that makes me think 'human civilization is worth it, after all'. Enjoy!
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Summary: Pretentious Book
Review: A "reader from London" is right: this book could only be enjoyed by pretentious people. The millions of people who have read In Search of Lost Time and loved it, as well as the great writers - Woolf, Nabokov, Joyce and many others - who have admired it, are clearly wrong. The reader from London who found it pretentious is obviously more perceptive than any of these people. Any statement that someone actually enjoyed this book must therefore be insincere, and is designed only to show how clever that person is.
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Summary: A pretentious book for pretentious people.
Review: Ohhh...I loved Swann's Way. Reading Swann's Way was a rapturous experience. I read it at least three times a year, sometimes more. I named my son Marcel. I named my daughter Gilberte. I have no life, but I love this book and it has touched me in a very personal way. Look at how smart I am. I am better than you because I can recognize this book as the best thing ever put on paper. Anyone who disagrees is an illiterate fool. (can you pick up the sarcasm? I hope so, I'm laying it on pretty thick).
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Summary: Reading Swann's Way is like listening to a Beethoven sonata.
Review: The opening sixty pages of Swann's Way (entitled "Overture") is among the most beautiful passages of world literature. In symphonic language, Proust sets the stage for his entire Remembrance of Things Past. If you've never read Proust before, but know that you should, just try "Overture." Read it in one sitting and you will become hypnotized by a writer in a class by himself. The Modern Library edition features the 1980s revision of the earlier Random House edition. It's a stunning translation.
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