Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Luzhin awoke fully dressed, even wearing his raincoat.

The Luzhin Defense by Vladimir Nabokov

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This is the young Russian Nabokov’s second or third novel, depending when you start counting. It’s about an aloof child clamoring for the attention of a father (a famous writer) who turns to chess on a whim at school and discovers that he is a grand master in the making. Now consumed with the life of a leading chess master, Luzhin finds himself unable to process the chaotic and unpredictable world outside the game and begins to inscribe the rules and structures of chess onto […]

Oh, how I sometimes yearn for the easy swing of a well-oiled novel!

The Real Life of Sebastian Knight by Vladimir Nabokov

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This is Vladimir Nabokov’s first English language novel, whereas he previously published 8 or so Russian language novels living in various countries, publishing under a pseudonym, and living the life of a political (but rich) exile. He also grew up learning multiple language including Russian, French, German, and English and so while a departure from his previous novels, it’s still quite in sync with other parts of his life. The novel is written as a kind literary memoir, or more precisely almost as a set […]

Sleep is the most moronic fraternity in the world, with the heaviest dues and the crudest rituals. It is a mental torture I find debasing

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It’s hard to properly write the title for this memoir in the boxes on this site because it has a comma in the title and that gums up the works a little. The title is an apostrophe, telling Memory to Speak. I don’t mean to explain that to you, but for all the years I knew of this title and thought about reading it, I couldn’t ever make sense of it. I read Harry Potter in high school and didn’t the joke of Diagon Alley […]

Triptych of no real consequence

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Philip Roth – The Breast 2/5  Cynthia Ozick – The Shawl 4/5    Vladimir Nabokov – The Eye 3/5     So these three short novels or novellas don’t really have much to do with one another ostensibly, but I read them one after the other on a Friday sick day and thought a little about their connections or rather what connections I might draw on them. To start, I will tell you what each one of them is about. The Shawl starts off in the […]

It’s gross you guys.

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Lolita is a narrative that permeates pop culture, in advertisements, references and romanticizing of things that are not okay. This narrative probably originates from the 1997 film adaptation starring Jeremy Irons:   When I was a teenager this novel was a way to live out my own sexuality and confused feelings about adults around me. These adults were mostly male teachers making Humbert Humbert the perfect stand-in. However engaging with this story as an adult is a bit different. It’s gross you guys. Lolita is […]

A fantastic farrago of evil

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This book has some serious payoff at the end, and of course a wonderful fake index that clarifies and makes everything right. If you don’t know this one, this is a novel in the form of an academic annotation of a long poem. The poem itself is a 1000 (technically 999) line poem about a pastoral and academic life, love and marriage, childhood, parenting, death. Like what most poems are about, with a kind of erudition and educated set of allusions. The notes on this […]



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