Upsilamba!

Christmas must entail at least one new book and with it, a renewed enthusiasm for reading. My book is from my sister and is called Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi. I think I had vaguely heard about it sometime in the past year, and it is capturing my imagination and broadening my understanding of the world so far. I had the mistaken idea that somehow putting women in veils and robes would strip them of all individuality and personality, but luckily this is not the case. I am meeting some extraordinary women through the pages of this novel.

Upsilamba is a word from Vladimir Nabokov's Invitation to a Beheading. Possibly an invented word, the girls in the novel each have their own meaning for it. It became part of their secret language, these Iranian women who are covertly studying Western literature in secrecy. I'm sorry to say I am terribly underread, and haven't even read Lolita.

On another note, has anyone ever listened to Josh Groban? The name evokes images of John Mayer or even Michael Bolton, but that he is not. I believe he sings in Italian and English, another language anyway. A client of mine introduced me to him and burned a CD for me. I was in a Josh Groban mood today, I guess you could say.