Quick, can anyone remember the text on the last page of Where the Wild Things Are? My parents must have read it to me hundreds of times, and when I read it to Emma, I saw afresh what a great ending, “ and it was still hot,” gives that story.
If you’ve never read. Lolita, you don’t know just how much that first page pulls the reader into the book. The inside of Humbert Humbert’s head, his story, his perceptions might not be where you want to be; but there you are. After being challenged to read Ulysses, a friend once guiltily confessed that he abandoned Bloom for H.H. when he stole a peek at the start of Nabokov’s novel. I told him that I totally understood.
Lolita was my mother’s favorite book. That and The Wind in The Willows were the books she always said she loved the most. Her favorite song was “Summertime”, and I think her favorite Beatle was George. She fostered a long movie-star crush on Al Pacnino. Mama would have been 74 today.
I have just spent the week in the world my son and his friends. It was a week with a cookout, two fireworks displays, lots of Pokemon trading and battling and a Super-Soaker war by the pool. This week, was his July week of Martial Arts camp, and he learned lots of new movies with older students; a big treat. I spent a week walking through Davis Square four times in three hours. I must love that boy.
This week, Liam and I plan to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” on the first day; Jamie’s coming too. Last month, I thought I’d watch all the movies. I toyed with the idea of watching the movies from V to I. I thought it might be fun to watch the characters get younger and younger. I didn’t make the time to do that, but I did see Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone on Saturday night. After spending the week with young boys, just seeing Daniel Radcliff so little and scared was almost enough to make me cry. In the first few minutes of the movie, Jamie said the same thing he said the first time he saw the movie: “why does that poor little kid live with those horrible people?!?!” All I could think was that Harry Potter just needed someone to love him.
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