andamu

I have completed Lolita. Finally, last night I wrestled through the final fifty pages. And then the author's afterword. And then I went back to read Martin Amis' introduction completely.
I had started that earlier, but had abandoned it on the second page, because I felt - foolishly perhaps - that I wanted to read Lolita the first time not colored by the interpretation of others, or at least not more so than the sketchy bits to which I had been exposed so far. Which is also why I had wanted to read it before starting in earnest Reading Lolita in Tehran.
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This drive to read a work for the first time completely fresh, experiencing only my own response to the work, has become absurdly important to me in recent years.
I know I miss many of the important themes in the book. I know that I might have a "fuller" experience if I take other opinions into account. But unless I do it this way, I will never know what my own true response was to the book, how it affected me personally.
Later, before I reread the book, I search out other opinions and critical analyses of the work, and re-evaluate both it and my perceptions in the light of these.
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I celebrated its completion by digging into The Giver by Lois Lowry. This is a Newbery medal winner, a work frequently prescribed for high school students, about a Utopia which is based on "Sameness," where difference has been eliminated and everything is experienced at a mild level without extremes.
The book is an easy read; I started it last night before turning out the light and I finished it this morning in bed before breakfast. (MLK is our last company-paid holiday until Memorial Day). I should qualify that last statement - the read might be easy, but the material is not: it is challenging and thought-provoking.
A friend who came to lunch yesterday brought it for me to read, and I dislike holding on to borrowed books for too long, scared that I might forget to return it, or that something might happen to the book.
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And so this morning, I started back on Reading Lolita in Tehran and also The Mistress of Spices.
Why two books together, you might ask. Well, I am reading the Nafisi aloud to my husband, so I can obviously only read that while the two of us are together with time to devote to the book. At other times I will be enjoying the Divakaruni.
Both are engaging, so that it is with reluctance that I put them down, even when only exchanging one for the other.
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And I have another book to add to my Future reading list: The In-Between World of Vikram Lall by M.G. Vassanji. This book was a birthday gift to my precious one by his younger son, so I'll queue up behind him to read it.