The end of the year is coming up fast. By which I mean to say that at time of writing it’s tomorrow.
So I figured I should really get off my arse and review some of the books I’ve consumed in the time since I last posted.
(Which is, as ever, far too long ago.)
They probably won’t be too long, but still… here we go.
(more…)
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars.
I’d reached my 40s and hadn’t read any Nabokov. None. This in itself is a fairly large stain against the whole literature-at-uni education trajectory, but it’s especially galling given that now I have read some, and it turns out that the work is ridiculously good.
Like, so much better than I could’ve hoped. To think that there’s people out there who suspect that Infinite Jest takes textual explanation and sidetracking to its ultimate end. (I was one of them until today, let’s face it, even though a Russian whipped Wallace at that game 34 years earlier.)
Get in, loser. We’re gonna fuck with narrative structure.
Yeah nah. 