Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Nabokov is Funnier than I Gave Him Credit For

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

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“I’m not smart enough for Nabokov” I thought to myself as I began his hilarious and sharply observed novel Pale Fire. But then I remembered a saying I recently heard: I don’t have to understand something to appreciate it. And I understood more than I expected to. Like Lolita, Nabokov has written an unreliable narrator, full of himself and driven by unrelenting desire, in this case, the desire to have ownership of his poet neighbor’s final poem. The narrator, Dr. Kinbote, opens the work with […]

Trigger warning. Also, spoilers.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

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I don’t consider myself particularly well-read. I’ve never read Faulkner. Only read The Great Gatsby last year (or the year before, I don’t remember). I’ve read Hemingway once, and didn’t particularly like The Old Man and the Sea. I’ve never read Austen, or Waugh, or Virginia Woolf, or Pynchon, or countless other important literary figures. But I’ve long flirted with the idea of being comfortable with books enjoyed by well-educated people with posh British accents who casually insert French into everyday conversation. (For the record, […]

More Nabokov

Despair by Vladimir Nabokov

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Look at the Harlequins! by Vladimir Nabokov

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Despair – 4/5 Literature is full of doubles. Whether this means the concept of foil characters who are designed to offset the lead character by contrast like Tybalt to Romeo or Fortinbras to Hamlet, twins and twinning, chiastic structures, repetitions in actions and plot, cycles of violence etc, or like literal doubles. In most of these stories where are actual double occurs we will get something like Mr Hyde as shadow-self to Dr Jeckyll or a trickster figure like in Dostoyevsky’s The Double and the […]

Speak, Memory

Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov

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Speak, Memory – 5/5 Stars Rereading this book for the first time in a few years and this time as an audiobook opened up the story, the writing, and the book overall in some positive ways. Nabokov has become for me not necessarily a favorite writer because I don’t like every single thing he’s written, and my love for his writing comes with some pitfalls (ahem, figuring out what exactly to do and feel about The Enchanter and Lolita), but my esteem for him as […]

The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov

Bottom of the Barrel by Vladimir Nabokov

Nabokov's Dozen by Vladimir Nabokov

A Russian Beauty and Other Stories by Vladimir Nabokov

Details of a Sunset and Other Stories by Vladimir Nabokov

Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories by Vladimir Nabokov

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It’s always been true that most of Vladimir Nabokov’s literary output has been a family affair. Vera Nabokov was always his first reader, editor, “muse” and of course ran his life’s affair, as he was a kind classic European aristocratic effete, something he adored. In the United States, he was of course no better. These stories might be the most family affair as not only did Vladimir translate all of them with his son Dmitry, who also translated most of Nabokov’s Russian writing with his […]

Bringing Life to the Story

The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel that Scandalized the World by Sarah Weinman

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I’m not usually one to knock people’s tastes in problematic art. Chinatown is my all-time favorite movie and I’d be hard pressed to never watch it again. So it’s tough for me to judge. Which doesn’t mean that automatically immunizes me from criticism. I may be a “You do you” person but I also believe we should be critiquing our tastes at all time and remember that many of them come at a cost. I read Lolita when I was an 18-year old college freshman. I’d like to say […]



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