Listening to Jeremy Irons read Vladimir Nabokov's prose was, how shall I say, uplifting. If I were male that adjective would work better. Lolita became more amazing because I heard all Nabokov's language (whereas in print I have to make a conscious effort to hear the words), and Jeremy Irons's voice and the feeling but not dramatization he brings to the text enhanced it even further. I thought my favorite audio book was Their Eyes Were Watching God or Catch-22 or A River Runs Through It or Rob Inglis reading Tolkien but it is Jeremy Irons reading Vladimir Nabokov. I was as enchanted as a hunter throughout.
Two 3.6-mile city rides and three miles of jogging.
I jogged more of my route than before but at a slower pace.
On days I both bike-commute and run at noon, I must eat more than an apple and two bananas. I was shaky by the time I got home.
Alfred Appel Jr., editor. Extremely helpful, and he admits that Nabokov chastised him for seeing symbolism in words like rose and carmine where, Nabokov said, if he'd wanted to describe something "red" and mean something by it, he'd've done so, and even more useful for the Latin and French and pidgined Latin-and-French I would otherwise miss in an audio version, like the "Repersonne" pun.
I searched Project Gutenberg for books on the lists with the earliest publication dates, and that's how I came to read Knut Hamsun sooner rather than later. And am I ever glad. It made a good companion piece to listening to Lolita because of the all-consuming insanity of the protagonists. Where Humbert Humbert has the selfish absorption of the pedophile, the unnamed narrator here has starved himself into Vision Quest. It's amazing.