Jorio Dauster sends:

Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov (Vintage, $15). Nabokov's main characters are often haughty — if fascinating — sociopaths. But I love Timofey Pnin because his incapacity for handling the world is downright heroic. Everyone admires Nabokov for his turn of sentence and sparkle of metaphor. He was also a very funny man, and one of the great literary architects. Every piece is in its place because there is no other place for it.

—Aleksandar Hemon is the author of the novels Nowhere Man and The Lazarus Project, both National Book Award finalists. His new novel, The Making of Zombie Wars, follows a writer working on a screenplay about a zombie apocalypse.