Ordinary is extraordinary: "How Proust Can Change Your Life" by Allain De Button

Ordinary is extraordinary. The book " How Proust Can Change Your Life" by Alain De Botton shows how a great novel can be nothing less than life-transforming. It can be a companion to read Michel Proust's masterpiece “ In Search of Lost Time” which was published in 1913 is a seven-volume novel with 3444 pages that follows its narrator also named M arcel as remembers his life from early childhood to imminent death in aristocratic 19th century France. Reading is therapeutic. Proust says while we are reading we are reading ourselves. We habitually match the characters with people from our own life. A piece of literature is alive by the ways in which it parallels our own life. At first, the character’s manners might seem remote and their concerns irrelevant to us but we will soon find points of resonance between their lives and ours and be drawn to them. Reading Proust will also make us less lonely. We find comfort in the experiences we share wit...