Books I Wish I Had Discovered Sooner

There's just one, actually, by the ever-insightful Alain de Botton. Oh, how I wish I had browsed How Proust Can Ruin Your Life before I ever read that first paragraph in Swann's Way where the narrator describes the moment in which he falls asleep. How much more sleep would I have gotten in the six months since, and how much more in the next six months, because you haven't climbed Everest until you get back down (Most people who die on the descent), and I've just started Sodom and Gomorrah (which is volume IV of VI for my more provincial readers not yet familiar with Proust). It is nice knowing that I only have to read another two thousand pages, but I fear the damage is already done. Perhaps this proves correlation but not causation (my ham handed attempt to apply my profound insight to the matter using a long and difficult parenthetical clause--I know this--will add absolutely no value to this sentence), but the more Proust I read, the less ability I have to compose a coherent, readable paragraph.