Goodreads Monday is a weekly meme started by @Lauren’s Page Turners but is currently hosted by Emily @ Budget Tales Book Blog. This meme is quite easy to follow – just randomly pick a book from your to-be-read list and explain why you want to read it. It is that simple.

This week’s book:

Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov

Blurb from Goodreads

One of the best-loved of Nabokov’s novels, Pnin features his funniest and most heart-rending character. Professor Timofey Pnin is a haplessly disoriented Russian émigré precariously employed on an American college campus in the 1950’s. Pnin struggles to maintain his dignity through a series of comic and sad misunderstandings, all the while falling victim both to subtle academic conspiracies and to the manipulations of a deliberately unreliable narrator.

Initially an almost grotesquely comic figure, Pnin gradually grows in stature by contrast with those who laugh at him. Whether taking the wrong train to deliver a lecture in a language he has not mastered or throwing a faculty party during which he learns he is losing his job, the gently preposterous hero of this enchanting novel evokes the reader’s deepest protective instinct.

Serialized in The New Yorker and published in book form in 1957, Pnin brought Nabokov both his first National Book Award nomination and hitherto unprecedented popularity. 

Why I Want To Read It

Happy Monday, everyone! I hope you all had a restful weekend. I hope you were able to recuperate and prepare for the workweek ahead. I know. Nearly everyone loathes Mondays, and I am no exception. Nevertheless, I look at Mondays as windows of opportunity to recalibrate and restart afresh. It is a chance to work on our goals. I know, the start could be quite sluggish. Anyway, compared to the previous week, the first day of this week here in the Philippines is rather hot and humid. After several days of intermittent rains, the sun has returned to being its normal self. I hope everyone is starting or has started the workweek on a high note. I hope everyone makes it through – or survives – the workweek. I hope that the weekend equipped everyone for the tedious week ahead.

Time does fly fast. Just like that, we are already in the eighth month of the year. August has been quite notorious for the Orientals, who refer to it as the ghost month. East Asians, particularly the Chinese, believe that August is when the gates to the underworld are opened, allowing spirits to visit their loved ones. It is the time when business is expected to slow down. Everyone is also warned against traveling or making any major decisions. Regardless, I hope that August will be a good month for everyone. I hope that as 2025 moves forward, everyone is showered with blessings, positivity, healing, and growth. I hope good news and kindness will come knocking on everyone’s doors in the coming months. I wish success and blessings for everyone. More importantly, I hope everyone is doing well, in mind, body, and spirit.

With seven months down, it has now become imperative for me to monitor my progress in my reading challenges. While I am on track with my goal of completing at least 100 books this year, I have been lagging behind in my reading challenges. Ticking off books from these reading challenges will be my priority for the rest of the year. I am currently reading my second novel by the Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov. King, Queen, Knave is one of the books I listed in my 2025 Beat the Backlist Challenge. Most of the books in my remaining reading challenges are works of European writers. I have been immersing myself in the works of European literature in the previous weeks. As such, I have been featuring works of European writers in this weekly update/ This week, I am featuring another novel by Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin.

Vladimir Nabokov is certainly one of the most prominent writers in the landscape of contemporary Russian writers. His highly controversial novel Lolita is considered by many literary pundits as a reading essential. It is also his first novel I read. It was enough to make me want to explore more of his works, several of which were also featured in must-read lists. Pnin is among his most renowned. Originally published in 1957, Pnin is Nabokov’s 13th novel and his fourth originally written in English. In a way, the novel takes the form of a campus novel because the titular Pnin is a professor of Russian at Waindell College. The premise is enough to pique my interest, but why do I sense that I will be getting a character reminiscent of Humbert Humbert. HAHA. But I don’t think so.

The blurb does make me even more curious about the book. It promises to offer a different dimension of Nabokov’s oeuvre. At least in terms of premise. But it also offers an exploration of human nature. Pnin seems to be a complex but interesting character. Now, I can’t wait to see how Nabokov will paint his portrait. I can’t wait to acquire a copy of it. This will further my appreciation of Russian literature, which is a part of the literary world that has certainly grown on me, thanks to the works of Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky. How about you, fellow reader? How was your Monday? What books have you added to your reading list? Do drop it in the comment box. For now, happy Monday and, as always, happy reading!