After the shortest long weekend ever I'm back in the same place as I was last week when I told you I had resolved to get my reading butt into gear and I am happy to report that I have! I'm on my way to finishing Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita which has been an incredibly challenging read. Not because of how he writes, I love his whimsical sarcastic way of writing, but because of the subject matter. The narrator often begs the reader to try and understand the things he's writing from his point of view or at least to be sympathetic to his unhealthy obsession with little girls ("nymphets") and Lolita in particular. I do think I'm more sympathetic than Graham has been (who tells me the narrator should be locked up in an asylum for perverts) but it's still been difficult understand or to get on board with Humbert's (that is, the narrators) illicit actions regarding his "step-daughter."
Aside from reading we had a friend come and stay over at our place this past weekend. We only have one bed so we had to buy a blow-up mattress and slept on it on our lounge floor which was like a mini camping trip (a camping trip where graham would slam/roll his body into the tv cabinet every 2 hours or so throughout the night). We spent saturday lounging around, getting tea, going back to bed, having hour-long heated debates in bed while the sunlight streamed in through the curtains- the perfect way to spend a day in my opinion. We decided to take a chance on having lunch at a mexican place well known for their food poisoning and we came out alive with full tummies (the food was surprisingly good!).
[Only 6 more weeks to Paris and Amsterdam. One of my lovely friends is in Paris at the moment and all her pictures and tweets are causing the anticipation of traveling to be SO much more than is rationally acceptable. Grahams mom bought me a beautiful brown leather passport cover to take with- 6 weeks seems like a century away!]
For the past few days (and days to come) I've been cooking my little heart out-obviously not to the level that it's done on master chef but still- I made my (when I say my I mean Jamie Olivers) amazing chorizo pasta on saturday night which has become to go-to dish for when we want something yummy and spicy that requires very little effort. I baked for women's day on Thursday (regular vanilla biscuits with royal icing but for some reason they turn out to be flipping fantastic) and I shall put the recipe on the blog soon. Last night I made spicy fish stew which may replace the chorizo pasta as the easiest tastiest dish I know. And tonight it's roast chicken and oven veggies- so chilled. I must admit that I'm pretty impressed with myself, a year ago I could make toasted sandwiches but now I think nothing of making roast chicken. Its pretty awesome what you can teach yourself to do when you have to. When you have a starving husband at home who looks at you with puppy eyes when he asks what dinner is.
I know you're dying to read a bit of Lolita now to see what dodgy things the characters get up to so i'll save you the trouble of hunting the book down;
[this quote is taken from the time that the narrator first sees Lolita]
"It was the same child-the same frail, honey-hued shoulders, the same silky supple bare back, the same chestnut head of hair. A polka-dotted black kerchief tied around her chest hid from my a gaping eyes, but not from the gaze of my young memory, the juvenile breasts I had fondled one immortal day. And, as if I were the fairytale nurse of some little princess...I recognized the tiny dark-brown mole on her side. With awe and delight... I saw again her lovely in-drawn abdomen where my southbound mouth had briefly paused; those puerile hips on which I had kissed the crenulated imprint left by the band of her shorts- that last mad day behind the "Roches and Roses." The twenty-five years I had lived since then, tapered to a palpitating point, and vanished."
