I picked up the June 13/20 issue of The New Yorker and read through it while I got the oil changed at Luscious Garage.

Review: Absolutely heartbreaking story by Aleksander Hemon about his infant daughter's brain tumor. Read only if you wanted to be torn asunder or need to clear your tear ducts.

However, it also had The Russian Professor an excerpt from Nabokov's letters about his lecture tour that he undertook in the fall of '42 because a teaching job at Wesleyen didn't materialize. While I was reading it I kept thinking, "This is such a Preston Sturges movie. I wonder if the Coen Brothers could film this."

Because Nabokov isn't going to Yale or Duke, his tour is: Croker College in Hartsville, South Carolina, Spelman College in Atlanta, GA (a traditionally black women's college), Georgia State Womans College in Valdosta, a stopover in Springfield, Illinois and Macalaster College in St. Paul, MN.

He's taking trains and buses and forever being driven off to some field by some dotty old female botany professor so he can collect butterflies and he keeps having weirdly picaresque coincidental meetings ("...after lunch a Presbyterian minister, Smyth, turned up, a passionate butterfly collector and son of the famous lepidopterologist Smyth, about whom I know a lot (he worked on sphingids)."

Then he's being paired off to play tennis with some random professional woman in Atlanta, or giving lectures to all the young women of Spelman after daily church services and being mildly cranky and inconvenienced by missed connections and nervous barbers.

It's all so dry, with gentle, affectionate snark and oddly fish-out-of-water, but has a melancholy undercurrent as he's longing to write in Russian again.

Wes Anderson could do this movie too.

I finished Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and, damn, that book takes like two hours to tie up all the loose ends, eh? Still, I dig that the Triwizard Tournament gives it a nice structure, and, while it may not have made much impact the first time I read it, I felt really bad about Cedric. He's such a decent person. Too bad "Kill the spare" is such a deliciously evil line I mouthed it along with Jim Dale. And on a second read, I am still anti-SPEW. You could remove SPEW from the book very easily. It's not plot-relevant at all, and it just makes Hermione annoying.

I'm 150 pages into Pretties, and, Jesus Christ, every third word is "bubbly," holy shit. But I like Tally now, and we've moved on to the inevitable revolution storyline that dystopian narratives lend themselves to (unless you're Orwell or Huxley). Also, I sort of envisioned the Specials as Agent Smiths, so it was kind of amusing when Dr. Cable basically said, "Human beings are a disease, and we are the cure."

And on a second read, I am still anti-SPEW. You could remove SPEW from the book very easily. It's not plot-relevant at all, and it just makes Hermione annoying.

I thought it seemed really in-character for her, especially for age 14.

Jesus Christ, every third word is "bubbly," holy shit.

I know, right? But you kind of get used to it. It's weird. Also, Pretties is totally my favorite. I loves me some Zane.

Neil Gaiman tweeted this piece about the bestseller list by Michael Dirda.

Books that make me sob? Apparently The Dog That Wouldn't Be.

This is a favorite book of my DH, my sister, and her two kids. So when I saw it on the bookshelf in my room at my sister's, I pulled it down for bedtime reading.

But first, because it's a dog book, and I had a suspicion, I flipped to the last page (I NEVER do this), read just that page, sobbed like a baby, and spent the rest of the week eyeing the book like it was a rattlesnake curled up on the nightstand.

What is it with dog books?

Lately, kids books have been making me cry. Not YA, but children's books. The latest being Knuffle Bunny 3 for which I was not spoiled and read it to Em as my first time reading it. Poor girl. Also, Love That Dog by Sharon Creech - again with the dogs.

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood gets me every time and I read that at least twice a year. Specifically, the story when Vivi looses her basket on Sidda, Baylor, Little Shep, and Lulu.

for which I was not spoiled and read it to Em as my first time reading it.

I'm going to have to call this a Poor Life Choice.

There was this book about a orange tabby tripod cat? And about a hedgehog. Hedgie? And then a book I swear was an LM Montgomery novel (Wives of the Club in the title maybe?) but I can't source it.

Ahrg. But that was years ago. I actually don't turn to books for a crying catharsis anymore. When I need to break, I just think about my parents aging. Ahhhhrg.