Christian Chevalier Chevalier itibaren Bussy-le-Repos, Ranska
I absolutely adored this book. There were petty things I noticed, but it should be added as one book you need to read before death.
The first two volumes of this novel blew me away. This third novel was admittedly tougher for me personally. I got halfway through it the summer before grad school, put it down the day before math camp, and didn't pick it up again until two months after I graduated. Losing my momentum made it very hard to get back into it two years later. Furthermore, this entire novel was about Parisian high society, their parties, and the narrator's fascination with them. And what segment of the population could be less interesting than the royalty and aristocrats of Parisian high society 100 years ago? And what segment of their lives could be less interesting than their parties? So why, you ask, did I give this volume five stars? Because despite all these reasons not to like it, it is still that amazing. It is slow, but breathtaking. Proust somehow manages to make the lives of this dull segment of our species entirely relevant to my life, interactions I have with others, and feelings I have about people I know. In this novel as well as the two before it, he perfectly describes so many things that I think about but could never articulate, and makes me see little things in an entirely different way.
One of the Florida Sunshine State books. I read it with my girls. Why do they pick such dry, boring tales for our children to read? This book doesn't have much action, no twists or turns, but mostly the emotions this boy and his foster family have. I read that it is a sequel to a national award-winning book. Wish they would have picked that book instead. Hopefully, it opened my girls' eyes to the difficulties that many children face.