I just finished reading the new Vladimir Nabakov novel, The Original of Laura. In case you haven’t heard of the controversy surrounding the publishing of the book, here’s a quick summary: before Nabakov died in 1977, he asked his wife to burn the unfinished manuscript should he be unable to finish it. She could not bring herself to burn it, and after her death the responsibility fell to their son, Dmitri, who struggled with the decision for 30 years. Finally he decided to publish the novel, and the format is amazing: Nabakov wrote his novels on series of index cards, and Dmitri has published the book in the same format. Each page has a high resolution photograph of the original index card with a typed transcription at the bottom. Misspellings and errors are preserved. The best past is that the index card scans are perforated, so that the reader can punch them out and reorder them to create his/her own experience of the novel. Given the nature of the text – which jumps between viewpoints and timelines – this exercise could be quite rewarding. I haven’t tried it myself yet (I just read the story linearly for the first go) but can’t wait to do so.