1/1/2007

Our friend Katya reading (or, truthfully, pretending to read) The Ambassadors, by Henry James. She was reading it earlier in the day on Bart on the way from the East Bay to San Francisco and pulled it out for me to photograph while we were sunning ourselves after my sister made us waffles and mimosas--better sunshine in San Francisco than snow in Denver!

What she thinks of the book--not so good, though credits this to the short stints she's been reading it in and hopes to later (while not in the company of friends) to read a big chunk of it and reevaluate.

Her favorite author is Marcel Proust. She had someone, with great difficulty, bring her all seven volumes of his English translation of Remembrance of Things Past to Moscow, where she's from. They're all wonderful she says--written with convoluted syntax (she can't stand writers like Hemingway and Camus) and filled with observations. My sister the hostess said he's often quoted in neuroscience textbooks for his writing on the senses. They're all wonderful, Katya amended, except for the last, which is poorly edited--he was working on it up until the day he died.

She's also read three biographies on Proust, who was once considered the most complicated man in Paris, that are filled with "really weird stuff."