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Tag Archives: Vladimir Nabokov
Rejoyce. It’s Bloomsday.
Some men send flowers to commemorate an anniversary. James Joyce wrote Ulysses. Overachiever. On June 15, 1904, young James Joyce sent a note to Nora Barnacle, who was a waitress at Finn’s Hotel. Barnacle (what an apt name) was a … Continue reading
Posted in Books, James Joyce, On This Day, writers
Tagged Bloomsday, E.M. Forster, Edna O'Brien, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Ford Madox Ford, Frank McCourt, George Bernard Shaw, Gertrude Stein, Ireland, John Banville, Katherine Mansfield, Stefan Zweig, Sylvia Beach, T.S. Eliot, Ulysses, Vladimir Nabokov, W.B. Yeats, William Carlos Williams
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2021 Books Read
I lived at three addresses this year. I moved twice. In the middle of a pandemic. It’s been a year of upheaval, transition, as well as endurance. For most of this year, the majority of my stuff was in storage. … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged Austria, Balkans, Billy Wilder, Biography, books read, Cary Grant, Croatia, Czeslaw Milosz, David McCullough, Dubravka Ugrešić, Edvard Radzinsky, Elinor Lipman, England, essays, Eve Babitz, Evelyn Waugh, fiction, Germany, Guillermo del Toro, Hitler, Howard Hawks, Ireland, Italy, Liz Phair, Memoirs, Nancy Lemann, Nick Tosches, nonfiction, Olivia Laing, Poland, politics, Robert Conquest, Robert Kaplan, Russia, Sergei Kirov, Stalin, Sweden, Thomas Mann, Tom Wolfe, Vladimir Nabokov, war, WWII, Yugoslavia
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The Books: Arguably, ‘Vladimir Nabokov: Hurricane Lolita’, by Christopher Hitchens
On the essays shelf: Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens In December, 2005 Hitchens wrote an essay about Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, using it as an opportunity to discuss The Annotated Lolita, by Alfred Appel Jr. (which Hitchens seems to appreciate very … Continue reading
The Books: At Large and At Small, “Collecting Nature”, by Anne Fadiman
Next up on the essays shelf: At Large and At Small: Familiar Essays, by Anne Fadiman Anne Fadiman is a writer cherished by the O’Malley family, for her book Ex Libris (excerpted here) made up of essays by Fadiman having … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged Anne Fadiman, At Large and At Small, essays, Vladimir Nabokov
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2012. Love You, Hate You, Next.
I rarely do these things, but I saw this at my friend Ted’s place and thought I’d fill it out. On my own terms. 1. What did you do in 2012 that you’d never done before? Put together a New … Continue reading
2012 Books Read
Live from Memphis. Here are the books I read in 2012. 1. My Life with Elvis – by Becky Yancey. The first book published after Elvis’ death from one of the insiders on his team. She worked in the office … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged Afghanistan, books read, Christopher Hitchens, Diane Keaton, Elvis Presley, Iran, Janet Malcolm, Joan Didion, Rebecca West, Stephen King, Vladimir Nabokov
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Snapshots
— I watched Mike Judge’s Idiocracy this weekend. It’s a bit brilliant. I especially loved his observation about the deterioration of the English language, how those who speak correctly will eventually be looked on with suspicion. It actually made me … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Movies, Personal
Tagged Iran, July and Half of August, short films, snapshots, Vladimir Nabokov
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Nabokov Playing Chess
I love this photo. Vladimir Nabokov and his wife, Véra, 1966. Switzerland Photograph by Philippe Halsman (More cool chess photos on Slate)
1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die
Jessa Crispin has an interesting interview with Peter Boxall, editor of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. I loved what Boxall said at the end: Having benefited from an extraordinary number of emails and letters as well as … Continue reading
Posted in Books, James Joyce
Tagged A Tale of Two Cities, A.S. Byatt, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Alice in Wonderland, Amongst Women, Animal Farm, Annie Proulx, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, At Swim-Two-Birds, Atonement, Cat's Eye, Catch-22, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, D.H. Lawrence, Don DeLillo, E.M. Forster, Edgar Allan Poe, Edna O'Brien, Emily Bronte, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Finnegans Wake, Flann O'Brien, Flannery O'Connor, Frankenstein, Franny and Zooey, George Eliot, George Orwell, Great Expectations, Gulliver's Travels, Handmaid's Tale, Herman Melville, House of Leaves, Hunter S. Thompson, Ian McEwan, In Cold Blood, J.D. Salinger, J.R.R. Tolkien, James Ellroy, Jane Austen, Jane Eyre, Jeanette Winterson, John Irving, John McGahern, John Steinbeck, Jonathan Swift, Joseph Heller, Kazuo Ishiguro, Leo Tolstoy, Lewis Carroll, Lord of the Rings, Margaret Atwood, Mark Danielewski, Mary Shelley, Master and Margarita, Middlemarch, Mikhail Bulgakov, Moby Dick, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Notes From the Underground, Possession, Pride and Prejudice, Primo Levi, Sexing the Cherry, Stephen King, The Catcher In the Rye, The Country Girls, The Great Gatsby, The Hobbit, The Passion, The Shipping News, The Things They Carried, Thomas Mann, Tim O'Brien, Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote, Ulysses, Underworld, Vladimir Nabokov, Wuthering Heights
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