FYI
25 Mar 2011 2 Comments
You guys are terrible bloggers. I just have to say it. I did not enjoy vicarious living through your posts of this book. Next time, do better. Come on ladies!
2010
04 Dec 2009 Leave a Comment
New book? Main Street by Sinclair Lewis or Don Quixote by Cervantes, first name I can’t think of.
Ch 9-11 Thoughts
23 Oct 2009 1 Comment
- He starts going to public school in 8th grade? Who came up with that brilliant idea?
- I love the description of his drive to school, everything he passes. I like the idea of writing a map sort of description–I have so many memories of the bike path we walked on to every day of elementary school
- “all the private jokes which is the secret code of happy families.” So true! One of the things I miss about being with my siblings is the short hand we have from so much shared experience.
- The boy read WAR AND PEACE for the first time at age 11. I feel ever worse about abandoning Jenna on her quest.
- And finally, a lovely description. That is where Nabokov excels. “A sunset, almost formidable in its splendor, would be lingering in the fully exposed sky.”
Sweetness
17 Oct 2009 Leave a Comment
Chapter Nine: I love how Nabokov feels family pride, not just in his own parents (his dad in this chapter) but all of his family history. I could do better at touting the marginally interesting elements of my relations.
A Really Great Passage
12 Oct 2009 2 Comments
I know, you all have the same book, but I am going to copy this part down because I like it and would like you to all think about it. And them comment on how true it is. And how smart I am for noting it. So here’s the first paragraph of chapter five:
I have often noticed that after I had bestowed on the characters of my novels some treasured item of my past, it would pine away in the artificial world where I had so abruptly placed it. Although it lingered on in my mind, its personal warmth, its retrospective appeal had gone and, presently, it became more closely identified with my novel than with my former self, where it had seemed so safe from the intrusion of the artist.
So Similar
09 Oct 2009 1 Comment
When I read about Nabo’s early childhood aristocratic lifestyle I am overwhelmed with the similarities to my own life. Fifty servants, an estate, and mostly meal planning. Todd always sits down with his fountain pen and embossed leather folder to write out menus for the next day. That someone else cooks of course.
I must say that the man is very visual. Yes, I don’t really care about his family tree. Yes, he’s a bit pompous. But the descriptions of things are so vivid. I don’t think that is how my brain works; we are working on description in my creative writing class and I really struggle with sensory stuff. See, I can’t even explain it well.
Sentient Life
07 Oct 2009 1 Comment
in Speak Memory
It all started for Nabakov at age 4. I think I am still waiting to awake to a full knowledge of myself as part of the planet. But good for him.
My List
22 Aug 2009 Leave a Comment
1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen – No
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien – Some
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte – Yes
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling – No
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee – Yes
6 The Bible – Yes
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte – No
8 1984 – George Orwell – Yes
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman – No
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens – Yes
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott – No
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy – Yes
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller -Yes
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare – No
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier – No
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien – Yes
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk – No
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger – Yes
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger – Yes
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot – YES
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell – No
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald – Yes
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy – No
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky – Yes
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck – Yes
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll – No
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame – No31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy – Yes
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens – No
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis – Yes
34 Emma – Jane Austen – No
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen – No
36 The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis – Yes
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hossein – Yes
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres – No
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden – No
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne – No
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell – Yes
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown – No
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez – No
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving – Yes
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins – No
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery – Yes
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy – No
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood – Yes
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding – Yes
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan – Yes
51 Life of Pi – Ann Martel – Yes
52 Dune – Frank Herbert – No
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons – No
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen – No
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth – No
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon – No
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens -Yes
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley – Yes
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night – Mark Haddon – Yes
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez -Yes
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck – Yes
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov – Yes
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt – No
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold – Yes
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas – No
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac – Yes
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy – Yes
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding – Yes
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie – No
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville – Yes
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens – Yes
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker – No
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett – Yes
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson – No
75 Ulysses – James Joyce – No
76 The Inferno – Dante – Yes (not all the way)
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome – No and never heard of
78 Germinal – Emile Zola – No
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray – Yes
80 Possession – AS Byatt – No
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens -Yes
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell – No
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker – Yes
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro – No
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert – Yes
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry – Yes
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White – Yes
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom -Yes
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – No
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton – No
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad – Yes
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery – No
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks – No
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams – No
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole – Yes
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute – No
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas – No
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare – Yes
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Yes
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo – Yes
This list is no way from the BBC and is so weird…As you can all see I don’t read Jane Austen. So I could do that but I’m sure you have both read most of them. I would like to look up some of these that I know nothing about and then we can discuss and idea on Wednesday. By the way, I was totally honest here even though I am embarrassed about some books that I have never read. I hope you appreciate it.
An Excellent Quote
19 Aug 2009 1 Comment
I know that you ladies are done with the book but I am going to ignore that for a moment. I quite dislike this text, moreso as I continue. But I have found a redeeming line that I must share.
“Cara enlisted as guide a midget Venetian nobleman…”
I think that is the way one should be guided around any town or museum.
Man Love
13 Aug 2009 3 Comments
Whenever I throw up in the home of a stranger, I like to buy flowers. And then we become friends and I lie under a tree staring at the beautiful stranger. This is an odd relationship for the boy men, but maybe I am shallow and all men really talk about each other in such glowing terms when I am not around. Or maybe the stupid stuffed bear is distracting to me.
