Alex Guy was assigned Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire, the only book in the Songs about Books project to have been published in the twentieth century – all the others are relatively recent – and the only one that at this point is widely regarded as a classic, although at the time its critical reception was a bit chillier.
I was somewhat worried that this book would be a little bit more of a slog than the others so far, but now that I think about it I don’t know why. Nabokov’s work is not conventional by any means, but in my experience he is never not interesting, and always eminently readable. Despite the unusual structure of this book – which I’ll get to in a minute – I flew through it and was sorely tempted to go right back to the beginning and start again.
Shenandoah Davis – The Company We Keep
It’s not a revelation to say that great literature – or great art of any kind – does not have to be an enjoyable experience for the reader (or viewer, or listener). In fact, whether you’re talking about James Joyce, or John Cage, or Joseph Beuys (or even people whose names don’t start with ‘J’) sometimes the greatest art is precisely that which is the most difficult to absorb, at least at first. Thankfully, most of the books Paul selected for Songs about Books, while certainly excellent across the board, and often challenging in their own ways, have been generally enjoyable to read. He did decide to pick one of the five to be somewhat of a fly in the ointment, and 
The book 
In case you’ve been hiding under a rock (or just not reading this blog – how dare you!) for the past several months, the next installment of Ball of Wax Audio Quarterly is going to be the culmination of the 
Bright Archer