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It's odd that out of all the things brewing in my life, this experience is going to be the one I write about today. Maybe it's because it's so settled for me, and so much else is not quite settled out yet. Regardless, I've been observing my response to Nabokov's Pale Fire over the course of my reading, and it's an unusual enough response that I wanted to paint it here.

I've been reading this book for what seems like forever. I am not sure why it's taking me so long. Every passage registers and settles before I find myself beckoned back to read the next. There's an almost poetic density to the language and the multiple layers of fictionalized interplay. It's almost as if each little burst of reading explodes in spasms of literary pleasure in my brain.

I go in and out of my "reading phases," where I will chew through a large number of volumes in a fairly rapid succession. I also have off periods where I read less. Frequently that results in me putting down whatever book I'm reading, and moving on, recognizing that it's just not flowing for me. But with this novel, I find myself immersed. I literally love reading it; it's clever and coy and playful and brilliant. It's challenging and rewarding. I'm getting so much out of this book. But still, I linger over it, a few pages a week.

I'm not sure how to characterize my experience with the novel. I suspect that Nabokov, long held to be my second favorite writer behind Kundera, is eclipsing my appreciation for Kundera's bemused and wry love for his characters.

I'll write more when I've finished. I think this might actually be one of the first books I look strongly forward to re-reading.