I probably won’t finish the book I mentioned I was reading, In Patagonia. It is supposed to be one of the great “accounts of travels” book but, it’s just not engaging me. I think because of the high content of names: people and places with little sense of “this is going somewhere”. I’m bad with remembering names and specifics and I read the book with anxiety that I should be able to keep track of everything. But…I don’t think I need to. He is traveling, he will meet people, and then never see them again. That’s a beauty of travel. But I can’t shake the feeling that I am supposed to remember it all so that I can understand some point that he might make in the end.
So I pulled a different book from the Kommune library, Nabokov’s Dozen, thirteen short stories by Vladimir Nabokov, famous for writing Lolita. I think I will read that next. I am really enjoying the short stories. I love the style he uses to describe things, and also his choice of extra description / telling of events not necessarily needed to contribute to the sense of the story but they are attractive, you relate to them, and it pulls you in.

Some favorite lines:

It half slipped down from one of those vestibule chairs which are doomed to accommodate things, not people.

He slept badly the night before the departure. And why? Because he had to get up unusually early, and hence took along into his dreams the delicate face of the watch ticking on his night table (…)