Welcome to Litsy!

I actually didn't really care for this one. My #doublespin for the month @TheAromaofBooks
@PuddleJumper #flerken

I listened to this during a pretty hard week at work and feel like I missed a lot. But I feel that Nabokov‘s style, while great read aloud, really needs to be read physically to catch all the jokes and idiosyncrasies, anyway.

He mentions in one chapter the hope to write a second part and I wish he had gotten the chance, because ‘Speak, Memory‘ is missing something. Certainly it is the whirlwind his life became after Lolita.

The novel had been on my shelves for years, and I sort of had forgotten that I hadn't read it 😚. It's both sad and funny, but quite cruel in places. Tea is a Kotagiri Frost which has been on my shelves for over a year, probably. Maybe I should have drunk it Russian-style, with jam 😉

https://youtu.be/cMnd0Q5smJQ

The I Recommends by Jon Doughboy: https://minorliteratures.com/2023/10/10/the-i-recommends-jon-doughboy/

#AboutABook #ShortButPowerful I can‘t remember exact details but I remember really liking this book! 😁

Weeks later, I‘m still grappling with Lolita. And apparently most people are still grappling with it, months, years, decades later!

I‘m enthralled by this collection, not because every essay is great, but it‘s fascinating how one novel, one author, can provoke so much thought and discussion.

Naturally a book of essays about a book, runs the risk of repetition, oft-quoted lines, etc. but I appreciate that they‘re not all one-sided or laudatory.

First time reading anything by Charles Kinbote (or John Shade for that matter). It‘s a shame the rapacious Nabokov took advantage of the poor biographer and poet, respectively, to pass this off as his own work. But alas! not all of us can be as benevolent as the king of Zembla.

#HumbleHarvest #Novella I read this years ago and remember loving it , couldn‘t tell you why now though. I will say not everyone loves Nabokov , this is one of his later books. Maybe a novella is the way to go to give him a try!

A fictionalized account of the life of the younger (by 11 months) brother of Vladimir Nabokov, a gay man who traveled through the high-art circles of 1920s and '30s Berlin and Paris. Unfortunately he did not survive the '40s, dying in a Nazi camp in 1945, two months before liberation. I love books about the supporting characters in historically important people's lives, and this one is excellent.