Welcome to Litsy!

#12Booksof2021
#December

I spent two years on a Nabokov theme, reading all of his novels, with 2021 reading his English language novels. This biography, which is really special, was so meaningful to me in that context. It was possibly my favorite book of my Nabokov theme. It‘s a great book to complete this #12Booksof2021 list.

I got a 100 pages in. This is a series of interviews. In a nutshell, interviewer is trying to understand VN and sometimes asking really considerate thoughtful questions, and VN then proceeds to not answer - dodging, being clever, changing the topic. It‘s really irritating. I can‘t…

This was a tough read. It seemed clear until I realized I was getting lost. And most of it is a narrator talking crazy, which gets tiresome. There is complexity and it calms down in the last 100 pages. But, i was happy to be done.

This was his 17th and last novel and I have now read them all, plus a novella, a kind of autobiography, a small biography and a longer one of his wife - maybe my favorite of all this. Anyway, closing this chapter.

Struggling with this book, but it‘s nice to have the day off and be lazy with a sleepy kitty.

“I met the first of my three or four successive wives in somewhat odd circumstances, the development of which resembled a clumsy conspiracy, with nonsensical details and a main plotter who knew nothing of its real object but insisted on making inept moves that seemed to preclude the slightest possibility of success.”

Something to chew a few times before the implications of that sentence all come out.
#FirstLineFridays
@ShyBookOwl

I‘m not enjoying Nabokov‘s book of interviews, Strong Opinions. So I picked this up, his last novel. I really enjoyed the first 20 pages.

(In the car waiting waiting for the end of Hebrew school.)

My next book, a collection of interviews of a known-to-be-unreliable author, selected by the same author. Well, will see what‘s here. I‘m attempting to cram a few last Nabokovs into December. In January I‘ll move to a new theme (Boccaccio and Robert Musil are my planned 2022 themes)

Schiff is at her best writing slow and immersive, and with a subject complicated and fascinating enough to adapt to that. She pulled it off with Benjamin Franklin in Paris, and she does it here with the strikingly intelligent, proudly Jewish, fiercely humble partner of Vladimir Nabokov. She was his muse, caretaker, typist and his first and best reader. A really beautiful book.

“he believed God looks after entomologists as he does drunkards.”

‘"Véra, show him what you have in your handbag," Vladimir directed, with what Steinberg recognized as immense pride. Véra extracted the Browning ... To the great artist's eye the gesture was ripe with symbolism. It seemed as if Véra had been appointed the keeper of her husband's virtue. Véra would have shuddered at the mention of symbolism, but … ‘