Rating: 
Summary: Nice Try !
Review: I Like the way you promote your book...write a bad review about "Tuesday with Morrie" and leave a link to your book...I guess anything goes on the Net!
Rating: 
Summary: Hmmm...
Review: Someone writes, "I have read Proust, thank you very much. And I've read this book as well." I, on the other hand, have read neither. I give "How Proust Can Change Your Life: Not a Novel" three stars, meaning "neither good nor bad" because I don't know--yet I have something to say, something I think important. Regarding: "I haven't bothered to proof-read this message for grammatical or spelling errors, so feel free to criticize these at will, if it helps distract you from the actual content of the message." Criticizing grammatical errors in an amateur review (mine, for example) is very different from criticizing them in a published book. If the reviewer below who finds them in this book has quoted it accurately, that is reason enough to avoid this book or to review it unfavorably. Unless we start at some point to worry about language, the means of expressing "actual content", it will soon become impossible to do so intelligibly.
Rating: 
Summary: A classic; if there were 7 stars, I would give it to this
Review: I read some of the other reviews of this books - 95% are favourable - but occasionally, there's someone who says it's terrible. Not just "OK" but absolutely appalling. These are the Proust experts, who probably feel threatened by such a brilliant book having been written by such a brilliant young man. I can't recommend it to you enough.
Rating:
Summary: Provisionally a minor classic
Review: I found this book to be original and thought-provoking. For some reason, it evoked a similar state of mind to that which I experience while reading Iris Murdoch's "Under The Net". It appears to be a light philosophical treatise, albeit disguised as light literary criticism. As such, it passes the essential test of practicality. I have found myself (mentally) referring back to certain passages when wondering what to do about this or that situation in my own life. I also found it to be very good fun to read. Time and re-reading often do strange things to books. So I am not prepared to come to a conclusion about "How Proust Can Change Your Life" until I have read it again in a couple of years' time. But I am already looking forward to doing so. Meanwhile, thanks Alain de B for a very unusual experience.
Rating:
Summary: This is a good book
Review: I have read Proust, thank you very much. And I've read this book as well. It is well worth the five stars. I hate to be rude, but I can only imagine that those folks who give it one star are the same folks who read Proust just to say "Hey, everyone, I've read Proust, look how smart I am." They are, I think, threatened by any book that might make entry into their pompous little cabal more accessable to the average person. I knew these sorts of folks back in school. There is a word for them, but I can't mention it here. P.S. I haven't bothered to proof-read this message for grammatical or spelling errors, so feel free to criticize these at will, if it helps distract you from the actual content of the message.
Rating:
Summary: Delightful revisit to Proust
Review: Reading Remembrance of Things Past in my 20's changed my life, (30 year's ago), so it was a pleasure to revisit the experience with this book. This delightful book is a paean to Proust slyly disguised as self help--with a few jabs to Proust's weaknesses, which is the best way to approach a masteripiece. Proust especially influenced my attitudes toward friendship. At an age when every quarrel meant the end of a relationship, Proust's view, which was from the end of his life, gave me frankly, a view of a life as a work of art, or at least a story that over time made sense.
Rating:
Summary: An easy read, but superficial
Review: This is a short, easy-to-read book -- which is good because it has very little to say and, if it were longer or harder, it wouldn't be worth the effort. I've never read Proust, but I have to imagine that his philosophy life wasn't as thin and banal as it sounds in Botton's description of it.
Rating:
Summary: not a book--zero stars!
Review: It's hard to imagine that anyone who has read this thing and liked it has also read Proust. It's scary to think too much about what kind of person would give this "not a novel" five stars--but never mind; I'll stick to the rules and discuss the book. For one thing, Botton can't write; grammatical, structural and usage errors pepper the pages. I'm sorry that I have room to point out so few. On p. 5 he mentions a writer who "blithely declared his intention to devote himself to a final game of bridge, tennis and golf." Imagine that--all three rolled into one game; now that would be diverting indeed. B. does no better with parallelism on p. 9 where he notes that Proust's novel is a "universally applicable story about how to stop wasting time and start to appreciate life." Mere quibbles, you may protest, but what about a "writer" who can't even make subject and verb agree? (p. 25: ". . . there are a stream of extraordinary benefits attached.") And I defy anyone to understand the opening paragraph of Chapter 4: "A good way of evaluating the wisdom of someone's ideas might be to undertake a careful examination of the state of their own mind and health. After all, if their pronouncements were truly worthy of our attention, we should expect that the first person to reap their benefits would be their creator. Might this justify an interest not simply in a writer's work but also in their life?" Even if you make allowances for B's inability to use pronouns that agree with their antecedents, can you tell what the antecedents are supposed to be? And even if you get that far, the "this" in the last sentence has so many possible antecedents that any attempt at comprehension becomes impossible. Dangling phrases, misplaced modifiers, hopelessly-tangled syntax--B is master of them all. But enough. The careful reader, the astute reader, the kind of reader that it takes to read Proust will, if she or he cares to bother, find such howlers on every page of this not-a-book. As for the content, B seems to think that he invented the (sophomoric) notion that the characters in literature are to be "identified with." He even goes so far as to include a photo of his girlfriend to show how much she looks like Proust's Albertine. Has the man no shame? You're either going to read Proust or you're not, but in either case Botton's whatever-it-is will add nothing to your understanding or appreciation. And while Proust may indeed change your life, you certainly don't need this puerile and pretentious collection of scraps to help you realize it. The thing starts to live up to its title only when its compiler quotes, summarizes or "explains" Proust's novel, but why should you listen to Botton's simplistic and anti-grammatical ramblings when you can have the enchanting experience of reading Proust's work itself?
Rating: 
Summary: Is it really so bad?
Review: Let me start by saying that I sleep well at night and don't pretend to have the vaguest clue about some of the great writers of literature. Now that I've established my honesty and credibility, maybe I can say a few words about this book. Personally, I think the author wouldn't be such a bad fellow to know. I like the way he segmented the book and described relevant portions of Proust. I am a soldier and spend a lot of time in the field; currently in a part of the world which is undergoing an uneasy truce. I read whatever I can get my hands on and am tired of the muscle and skin magazines, car magazines, etc., which is the normal fare. When a book like this comes along, which is fairly easy to read and digest and more importantly, makes me want to attempt the real thing, then I don't think it's such a bad book and certainly not deserving of one or two stars. As for re-evaluating life's experiences, I hope that I can sit back one day and use a "Proustian" view to re-examine my current experiences; something which I have not been able to do as I've only been able to react. That is probably the biggest lesson and the irony of the whole Proust phenomenon, that is, from his bed, he observes with the utmost clarity, the most minute activities of a day, while the rest of us are busy living and missing out on these subtleties and insights into ourselves.
Rating:
Summary: Unusual in the best possible way
Review: Like all the best books, this one has generated serious controversy: some people saying it's brilliant, others not seeing the point at all. I can see why one might not like it - hey not everyone can be the same - but this is going to go down in the history of lit.crit as a completely original and revolutionary work. Could not be more highly recommended.
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