TSS Week 3

I am sorry to say that I gave up on Proust. I have wanted to read him for so long but I was just not enjoying it enough. I try to abide by the 50-page rule, and I gave Swann's Way 90 pages because it's so large, but it was just too much work for too little in return. Perhaps I will try again when I am older or have more time on my hands (retirement?).



To move along to another My Year of Reading Dangerously title, I started the Decameron by Boccaccio. I am pretty excited about this one because I love reading works from countries where my family has come from. So far, the narrator has given a backdrop of how the plague is sweeping Italy and has all but wiped out Florence. This set the stage for the fact that seven ladies and three gentlemen who met in the church of Santa Maria Novella left the city for their own safety. They are passing the time at a nearby palace (how convenient) and so they tell each other stories each day. I have visited both Florence and the church, which makes the work resonate even more with me.

This week I also read the first three books of the Fables series. I got the recommendation from a trusty bookish friend but was surprised when I picked them up at the library. I hadn't expected these "graphic novels" to be compilations of a comic book series. I don't read comic books and was almost put off by this until I decided to give it a shot. I was immediately sucked in. Fables takes traditional fairy tale characters - Snow White, the three little pigs and the big bad wolf, Goldilocks and the bears - and puts them in modern New York City, where they have an underground community called Fabletown. It is amazing to watch characters I know so well become - *gasp* - real people!