Ch 9-11 Thoughts

• 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.”

Slow Poke

I’m about 1/2 way through with chapter 6. I’m moving right along. Slow and steady?

This is for you Eliana since I hear you have a penchant for hyperbole: “[Mademoiselle] is cold, she is frozen stiff, frozen ‘to the center of her brain’–for she soars with the wildest hyperbole when not tagging after the most pedestrian dictum” (page 99).

Interestingly, I don’t think Nabokov really liked Mademoiselle but he never speaks of her as if she was the evil, uptight school marm that she probably was.  He gives her so much more depth and width (he he he) by discussing her motivations for crankiness and by allowing that he may have been naughtier with her than he should have been.

Chapter 5 really left me feeling an urgency to live and love the “now.”  I felt very sad for Mademoiselle when she got pushed out by the other tutor who was mean to her.  And I felt sad when Nabokov describes her old age in Switzerland with all the other past-prime nannies: “Huddled together in a constant seething of competitive reminiscences . . .”  And then the metaphor in which he compares her to the aged swan that can’t get into the boat but he flaps and sputters around it anyway.  It must be so terrible to become obsolete.

Syncopal and Eschewing

Syncopal = omission of letters or sounds from the middle of a word–bos’n for boatswain–I’m not sure I knew this was an English word.  It is a very common technique in Spanish poetry.  Often they use it to give double meanings to words.

Eschewing = avoid, shun

And scene.

Don’t hate me, women, but I finished the book. I’m not like Jenna, who is busy packing or Eliana, who reads more than one book at a time. I had to finish this before I started another. I’m sorry I’m sorry!

I have to say, though, THANK YOU! If it hadn’t been for our “book club” I don’t think I would have taken on Speak, Memory. And I’m so glad I did. I agree with Jenna’s recent post about his memories and how they are “vivid, coherent, and meaningful.” So true! I just wrote a short goodreads review of Speak, Memory, and I used the word “vivid,” too (and that was before I read this blog).

I love his family pride, too! I’m glad the book (my copy, at least) contains so many photos because I feel genuinely connected to these people. After reading the chapter about little Nabokov and his father, I especially love the picture of the two of them together, with Vladimir in a little sailor suit. I think his father is *sexy* I mean, look how he loves his son–and he also got assassinated for political reasons . . . now, THAT is a man!

What I will take away from Speak, Memory and what I will think of often are: his winter scenes, his pride in and love for his family, and his descriptions of Polenka, their head coachman’s daughter. It is too bad that Nabokov is so well-known for Lolita (which is very good, too!). Most people only know what Lolita is “about” and are probably afraid to read it, much less anything else by Nabokov.

When are we going to have a face-to-face chat about this book? Chili’s anyone?

Sweetness

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.

Where Kate Ruminates on Choices

As you know, my brother-in-law, Errol, is a Princeton grad student. I just saw some pictures (taken by a classmate, on Facebook of course) of some of their doings on campus. Don’t you wish we could all be hip, intellectual Princeton grad students. Seriously! I sometimes really wish I could devote more time to “studying” literature and learning . . . . Ah, well. Instead I’ve been cleaning and doing laundry all morning and reading books to my kids in between chores. Maybe THEY will grow up to be hip intellectual grad students!

PS Teddy got his hair cut yesterday. I think it makes him look more Russian!

A Really Great Passage

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

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.

Whoops. I didn’t see this until today. How fun!

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen – Yes
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien – No
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte – Yes
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling – Yes
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee – Yes

6 The Bible – Some
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte – Yes
8 1984 – George Orwell – Yes
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman – Yes
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens – Yes

11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott – Yes
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy – No
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller -Yes
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare – No
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier – Yes

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 – No
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot – YES

21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell – Yes
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald – Yes
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens – No
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy – No
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams – No
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh- YEA
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky – No
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck – Yes
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll – No
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame – Yes
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy – Yes
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens – Yes
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 – No
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres – No
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden – Yes
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne – No

41 Animal Farm – George Orwell – Yes
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown – Yes
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 – Yes

46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery – No
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 – No
52 Dune – Frank Herbert – No
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons – No
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen – Yes
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 -No
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 – Yes

66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac – No
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy – No
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding – Yes
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie – Yes
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville – No

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 – No
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 – Yes
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker – Yes
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro – No
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert – No

86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry – Yes
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White – Yes
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom -No
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 – Yes
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole – No

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 – No

I think all of us did pretty well on this list. Some of these I read when I was way too young to appreciate them (Jane Eyre, Rebecca, Wind in the Willows, et al), and I’d like to read them again. Great list, most are books that I really want to read some day. But, really, The Five People You Meet in Heaven?

My List

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

23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens – No
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy – No

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams – Yes26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh- YEA
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.

Reading List

Someone posted this on Facebook.  I looked through it and most of the books that I’ve read have either been due to school or book club.  I’m sure that you two have read more than I have but I thought that maybe we could pick a book from this list to read next.  I don’t know where the list really came from–the rumor is that the BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here.

Also, if it’s not too much trouble, I’d like to see which ones you’ve read too–or maybe I don’t want to know where I stack up.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen – Yes
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien – Yes
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte – Yes
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling – Yes
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee – Yes

6 The Bible – Yes
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte – Yes
8 1984 – George Orwell – Yes
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman – No
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens – Yes

11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott – Yes
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy – No
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 – No
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot – YES

21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell – Yes
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald – Yes

23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens – No
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy – Yes

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams – No

26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh- YEA
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky – Yes
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck – Yes
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll – Yes
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame – Yes

31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy – Yes
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens – No
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis – Yes
34 Emma – Jane Austen – Yes
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen – Yes

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 – Yes
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne – No

41 Animal Farm – George Orwell – Yes
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown – Yes
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez – Yes
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 – No
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding – Yes
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan – No

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 – Yes
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 – No
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 – No
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas – Yes

66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac – No (I can’t remember which Kerouac I read–maybe this one)
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy – No
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding – No
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie – No
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville – Yes

71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens – Yes
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker – Yes
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett – Yes
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson – No
75 Ulysses – James Joyce – Yes

76 The Inferno – Dante – Yes
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome – No
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 – No
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White – Yes
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom -No
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 – Yes (loooong time ago–could do again)
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole – No

96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute – No
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas – Yes
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare – Yes
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Yes
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo – Yes