Saundra’s Comment

I’ve got more free time than the rest of you so I’m probably way ahead on reading the book. The first thing I did was read the Intro, etc. and appendix. It helped give me some idea of what to expect and why it was written. Now I’m on p 103 and am loving the writing….especially the wonderful word usage. I have my collegiate Webster’s next to me, and if I had my French dict still I’d be using it too. (When the collegiate fails, then it’s the really big dict in the other room.) It’s so refreshing to have a full command of vocabulary used in his descriptions! Even though I’m guess at some of the French (it’s been a long time…), it’s such a treat. Every word seems so carefully selected to provide the maximum imagery and to evoke a wide range of feelings! For someone from such a wealthy and privileged class to end up teaching in US women’s colleges must have been quite a shock to him. However I suspect he had some empathy for the students, some of whom were likely from very wealthy, maybe not so cosmopolitan though, families as his. But his genius turning from math to butterflies after his sickness at age 7 was a strange thing. How could his brain power have changed so dramatically, yet not impaired his genius in all areas? I bet his governesses were really challenged to keep him in line. I love his word usage. It makes having to look up so many words worthwhile because the pictures he evokes are so beautifully described, yet without sloppy sentimentalism. The photos included are also useful springboards for imagination. I wish he had put more in, but it’s a small volume… Besides I think he was a very private individual, being quite careful about how he made this final arrangement of his earlier articles. Enough for now. Anyone have a French/English dictionary not being used? It’s been a long time… but we’d be finished before it could get here too.

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.

Conclusive Evidence

I thought about coloring each letter with the correct color as per Nabokov but who has that kind of time.  Use your synesthesia and maybe you can see the rose quartz and heather gray!

Some comments that I have about this book so far . . .

Page 11:  This book was first published with the title Conclusive Evidence.  Then he says, “conclusive evidence of my having existed.”  That’s my number 1 annoyance with this kind of writing.  The writers exert all of this effort to write beautiful prose about their lives.  The meaning in their lives comes through so nicely because of their techniques: metaphors, allusions . . .  I hate when they feel the need to remind the readers that it’s THEIR story.  Gag!   Watch, and you will see him remind the readers that this is his life.

Page 13:  “Among the anomalies of a memory, whose possessor and victim should never have tried to become an autobiographer,”  I love how he says he’s the “possessor and victim” of his memories.  This is the way to reveal truth!

Page 15:  “will look it up some day in one of those blessed libraries where old newspapers are microfilmed, as all our memories should be.”  As I’ve been writing about my own life for my BYU class, I’ve come to realize that my memories, once made concrete by my adult self, become something different than what they were in the etherealness of my mind.  My juvenile self could re-emerge through my memories so long as they never left me in the form of words and analysis.  They have meaning for me because they are mine but I’ve found that verbalizing the meaning for everyone else changes it.

Page 27:  “The following of such thematic designs through one’s life should be, I think, the true purpose of autobiography.”  I have also noticed that I have to work to get out of the common themes of my life that I talk about all the time and write about all the time and return to all of the time to make meaning out my current life. 

Page 28:  I thought this was a beautiful way to describe the differences between the formal and informal ways of addressing people–I also thought about when your parents yell at you with your whole name, “KATE MARIE PEDDICORD!”  “as if the singular were too thin to bear the load of her love”

Page 40:  I love how he comes to love “the beauty of intangible property, unreal estate” through his mother’s appreciation of the essence of things.  She was as weird as he was as far as I can tell. 

End of Chapter 2:  He spent this chapter discussing his mother and the love they had for one another. He gives beautiful descriptions of the contributions she made to his life and profession.  Sadly, she dies alone and desolate.  Somehow the beginning of the chapter makes her death terribly tragic.

Sentient Life

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.

New Project

Hopefully Nabokov won’t be too dreary for us.

He died in 1977–that’s when I was born–you too, Eliana, right?

He spoke Russian, English, and French–something we learned from War and Peace.

Weirdest thing I found about him:
Nabokov was a synesthete and described aspects of synesthesia in several of his works. In his memoir Speak, Memory, he notes that his wife also exhibited synesthesia; like her husband, her mind’s eye associated colors with particular letters. They discovered that Dmitri shared the trait, and moreover that the colors he associated with some letters were in some cases blends of his parents’ hues—”which is as if genes were painting in aquarelle”.

Vladimir Nabokov’s case of synesthesia can be described in more detail than merely the association of colors with particular letters. For some synesthetes, letters are not simply associated with certain colors; they are colored. Nabokov frequently endowed his protagonists with a similar gift. In Bend Sinister Krug comments on his perception of the word “loyalty” as being like a golden fork lying out in the sun. In The Defense, Nabokov mentioned briefly how the main character’s father, a writer, found he was unable to complete a novel that he planned to write, becoming lost in the fabricated storyline by “starting with colors.” Many other subtle references are made in Nabokov’s writing that can be traced back to his synesthesia. Many of his characters have a distinct “sensory appetite” reminiscent of synesthesia.

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

An Excellent Quote

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.

Done

I know I wasn’t supposed to but I finished the book.  I had to get it out of my hair.  I have other things I want to read.  If it wasn’t for Middlemarchers and the library, I would have gone back to the book every six months or so until it was done.