My May Reads

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
*My Invented Country: A Memoir by Isabel Allende
*Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith
The Last Summer (of You & Me) by Ann Brashares
*The Host by Stephenie Meyer
The Idiot Girl and the Flaming Tantrum of Death: Reflections on Revenge, Germophobia, and Laser Hair Removal by Laurie Notaro
*City of Refuge by Tom Piazza
Look Again by Lisa Scottoline
*The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaeffer
The True Naomi Story by Alayne Silver
*Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World by Eric Weiner (368)

12 books, 4,096 pages

I highly recommend the books I've asterisked; although some of them I own on Kindle and don't have to loan - sorry!

Interesting . . .

Penguin to Publish Vladimir Nabokov's Last Work

The Telegraph reports that Penguin will publish Lolita author Vladimir Nabokov's last book. The book is called The Original of Laura. It's a novel that Nabokov wanted destroyed when he died. His death wish will not be granted as the novel will be in bookstores in November.

Kirschbaum said she and Stefan McGrath, the managing director of Penguin Classics, sealed the deal after a three-day stay at Dimitri Nabakov's home in Montreaux, Switzerland. It was brokered by Andrew Wylie, the New York-based literary agent known as 'The Jackal'.

Kirschbaum said: "It was important that we meet because it was a big acquisition, and it was quite emotional for Dimitri because it was a big decision to publish, which took him decades."

The Original of Laura returns to territory that Nabokov explored in his previous novels Mary, Lolita and Ada – the yearning to recapture young love.

It is narrated by a man who fell obsessively in love with a girl when young, but is now unhappily married to a promiscuous wife.

Kirschbaum, who described the book as both dark and comic, said: "In this novel he is also very interested in psychology and in what it means to hate yourself and want to disappear."

The book was written on a series of 138 index cards. Penguin will publish the cards as well as a text transcipt. Penguin Classics will reissue Nabokov's backlist when The Original of Laura is released.

From: http://www.readersread.com/cgi-bin/bookblog.pl?bblog=417091

My April Reads

Another month in which I did not get in 10 books, but I have read 36 books this year in 4 months. So, I am averaging 9 per month right now, and at that pace, I will hit 100, which is the goal. If I actually get to take my 10-year anniversary trip in 10 days, I would expect my May reading to pick up. I've downloaded some "beach reads" to my new Kindle 2 - This Charming Man by Marian Keyes and The Host by Stephenie Meyer. Not sure what else I will be bringing with me . . .

Here are the April reads:

A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami
The Beautiful Miscellaneous by Dominic Smith
The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff
C'est La Vie: An American Woman Begins a New Live in Paris by Suzy Gershman
Bloodsucking Fiends by Christopher Moore
The Last Bridge by Teri Coyne
The Wednesday Letters by Jason F. Wright
Watchmen by Alan Moore

8 books, 2640 pages.