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May 12, 2011

Ceridwen rated it:

Lolita is a premonition of the slasher film by way of the Gothic novel, the point of view monster breathing in the grass as the co-educational campers couple amongst the furniture of middle America. It begins with that slasher staple, the note from the shrink, a wheezy clueless sort who mistakes fact for innuendo. This whole book occurs after the blackbird whistles, just to make an obscure poetic reference. The beginning sections reminded me of my local love, the anecdotal satirist of my youth, More...

78 comments like (96 people liked it)

Feb 01, 2012

Bird Brian rated it:

Fair warning: in this review, I’m going to repeat some things I’ve already said in Ian’s Lolita discussion group. I’m also going to assume the reader is familiar with the book.

If you love something, set it free.

We’re a long way from that.

This book poses a lot of big questions, and the biggest of all is whether Humbert really loved Lolita (aka Dolly, aka Dolores). I can believe that he thought he did, but did he really? He committed statutory rape. He kidnappe More...

46 comments like (44 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Namrirru rated it:

Nabokov often writes his novels in the perspective of detestable villains. You never like them, you're never supposed to like them, and Nabokov doesn't like them either. He slaps them around and humiliates them. And in the end, they pay the price for their sins. Readers never seem to realize this. They become immersed in the psychology of the book and feel defiled by it all. Instead, they should sit back and watch the bastards suffer. The stories are written in their own view so that makes the p More...

4 comments like (114 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Rolls rated it:

An old friend used to say that "Ulysses" was a good book to read but not a good book to "read". After reading "Lolita" I understand what he meant.

Nabokov was a man obsessed with word games and this book is crammed cover to cover with many brilliant examples. Language delighted the man and that certainly comes across. What makes this acheivement even more amazing was that English was his third or fourth language. It is mind blowing that he or anyone could More...

18 comments like (121 people liked it)

Sep 11, 2010

Jason rated it:

Nymph. Nymphet. Nymphetiquette. Nymphology. Nymphism. I will never think of 12 year old girls the same way. There’s a stain on my brain. The power of this book is that it’s creepy and taboo, but the pedophilia and incest is so damn plausible. There’s a criminal, upsetting proclivity of the subject matter, but the whole thing is oiled with reason--SAY IT AINT SO. It’s deviant, queer, puerile, and yet ever so human, darkly human, perverted in the corner.

Lolita lingers in my mi More...

83 comments like (118 people liked it)

Dec 01, 2007

Natalie rated it:

This book was disappointing and over-hyped.

When people talk about this book, they say things like it will "change the way you think" or that it's disquieting because it makes the reader sympathize with a pedophile. I thought wow, that much be worth reading.

Now I wonder if I read the same book as everyone else, or if *that* many people have misinterpreted it. It started out great: Humbert Humbert, the narrator, discusses different societies in the past that fo More...

30 comments like (120 people liked it)

May 04, 2008

Chris rated it:

*Ranked as one of the Top 100 Fiction of the 20th Century*
I’m not quite sure how to put this in words. Hell, I’m not sure what I intend to say, so this is going to be ugly. If you want to sit in on this exercise be my guest, you’ve probably got more important things to do, such as organizing your cassette tapes and LPs before shoving them in a box destined for the attic, believe me, your time will be better spent, especially when you take that stroll down memory lane and consider how kil More...

26 comments like (94 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

David rated it:

LUST AND LEPIDOPTERY
(Legend of a Licentious Logophile)

1. Libidinous linguist lusts after landlady's lass.
2. Lecherous lodger weds lovelorn landlady.
3. Landlady loses life.
4. Lascivious lewd looks after little Lolita.
5. Lubricious Lolita loves licking lollipops lambitively.
6. Licentious lecturer loves Lolita louchely.
7. Lechery lands lusty lamister in legal limbo.
8. Lachrymose libertine languishes in lockup.

14 comments like (117 people liked it)

Aug 12, 2011

Ian added it

Between the Covers

This afternoon, I said to my local bookseller (a lovely lady of a similar mature age to me!) that I had just finished “Lolita” and asked if she had ever read it.
She replied firmly, “No…and I’m not going to either. He’s a paedophile.”
A bit taken aback, I enquired further, “Who? The author or the character?”
Fortunately, she replied, “The character.”
For me, this exchange showed how much “Lolita” can still sharply divide opinion, even within love More...

105 comments like (45 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Eli rated it:

This book scared the living daylights out of me.

As everyone says - its gorgeously written. The language is so rich that it somehow spills over the sentences - there's more to them than you can easily ingest. The writing makes the whole thing a pleasure to read, and in a lot of ways puts Nabakov in control from the start - there isn't a lot of room to imagine motives since Nabakov explains so much. I should point out that were a lesser writer spend any time at all writing in a langua More...

2 comments like (59 people liked it)

Jun 15, 2011

K.D. rated it:

Nabokov himself said that this novel was his best. I still have to read the others but I agree when critics say that this is one of the best English novels ever. For me, the reason is the irony of having a very sick theme - pedophilia - but told brilliantly that you would fall in love with the book and you don't readily really know why.

From the famous opening statement: "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta:..." up to his closing statements More...

17 comments like (29 people liked it)

Sep 06, 2011

Paul rated it:

Other formerly shocking novels of previous centuries have lost their power, batteries quite flat (Madame Bovary, Ulysses, Lady Chatterly’s Lover) – we love them still but we wince no more, we may be quite amused at the idea that this word or that idea was not allowed in polite society – we may, indeed, be vastly amused at the very idea of polite society because society is just not very polite at all these days. But uniquely, Lolita, this great and appalling novel, only gets more shocking and mo More...

22 comments like (20 people liked it)

Dec 28, 2009

Matt rated it:

My favorite book in all of literature. When I first encountered this title at the age of nineteen I finally realized that great writers were "doing stuff" besides just telling stories. Sure, in high school there was plenty of dry discussion about symbolism and foreshadowing and even dryer in-class readings of poets like Emily Dickinson and Anne Bradstreet(Ugh!), but at that point it all sounded like "The Yellow Rose of Texas" to me.

As I cannot even begin to give More...

28 comments like (36 people liked it)

Nov 15, 2007

David rated it:

Lolita is a road novel, but its kind of the anti-On The Road (it was published in 1955, two years before Kerouac’s breakout book). Humbert Humbert and Sal Paradise travel some of the same roads, around the same time, but rather than some holy quest through sanctified towns in search of enlightenment and kicks, Humbert’s is a furtive, illicit journey through a bland, tacky, ephemeral, clumsily commercialized landscape. On the other hand, both Sal and Humbert are bohemians of sorts, and both cast More...

3 comments like (29 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Mary Ellen rated it:

I recently got into an argument with a friend about Lolita. I contend that it's one of the most beautiful books ever written, and that it's twice as amazing because Nabakov wrote it in English (which is his second or third language).

She contended that it was about a child molestor and was inexcusable.

I argued that it was more about chronicling a slightly off-kilter man's descent into wretched madness and total loathsomeness. A portrait of a child molestor, not necessaril More...

4 comments like (34 people liked it)

Jun 19, 2011

Mariel rated it:

I'm rereading for the group!

----
Lolita is my wallowing in the recesses of another's mind. This book is a snake mind pit.

It also broke my heart for the realization that knowing other people can be completely and totally foriegn. It is incredibly depressing to me how many people I've known (all female) who took Humbert's word about anything Lolita felt. Nabokov's genius was also in the telling between the lines. Those beats in spaces, the silences. How could the More...

4 comments like (22 people liked it)

Jan 29, 2012

The Scarlet rated it:

This is not a book about a pedophile: it is a book about everything modern adult women fear to be true about adult men; and the book about the most terrible fears I've ever had being true in the most terrible ways possible is also the most beautiful book I've ever read.

2 comments like (13 people liked it)

Mar 14, 2008

April rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

2 comments like (30 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Harajyuku rated it:

The other day I finished reading Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita." Thank God. It was wonderful. I compare the experience to cutting through black briars with roses growing and only a dull wooden machete in hand. "Lolita" was solid and boring, a monstrously obese... thing that danced like light through meadows of bumblebess and sharp grass and seven types of silky-soft wheat. I could not even believe that its toes could leave the ground. I still cannot. It was like a cherubim, only More...

4 comments like (19 people liked it)

Feb 05, 2009

Manny rated it:

I remember seeing an interview with Nabokov, where he was asked what long-term effect he thought Lolita had had. I suppose the interviewer was looking for some comment on the liberalization of censorship laws, or something like that. Nabokov didn't want to play - as you can see in Look at the Harlequins, he was pretty tired of these questions. So he said well, as far as he could make out, there had only been one effect. Mothers of young girls named Dolores no longer affectionately called them Lo More...

21 comments like (44 people liked it)

Oct 07, 2011

Carlo rated it:

What's great about Nabokov's Lolita is that it tells you something about yourself; What's weird about it is that right after reading it, you want to read it again since you know that you are not the same person anymore. It is so sincere that its truth comes as a slap in the face, and I'm certain that it will be read as long as people are around.

Lolita is the story of Humbert Humbert, a European man obsessed with certain young teenage girls, whom he sees as having the aura of adult w More...

4 comments like (11 people liked it)

Aug 17, 2011

Paul rated it:

This is a review of The Annotated Lolita. My review of Lolita itself is here

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/675...

***

Reading Lolita with this Malaysian jungle of annotations hanging over every paragraph is slow going, but reading Lolita without any explanation of the many (too many, my dear Vladimir) French sentences, the trillion allusions to other books and poems, the zillion links to Vlad's other novels, is to wade through a fog of half-comprehension. W More...

0 comments like (8 people liked it)

Sep 22, 2007

A.C. rated it:

I bought this book over a year ago along with Middlesex and Invisible Man. I enjoyed both of those books immensely, but found myself struggling with Lolita. The fact that I could not particularly explain why I had trouble with this book pained me for a year. I read other books, but I always found myself, in a manner similar to Humbert, coming back to Lolita.

Now, that I have come back to it, I have to say that I'm not completely sure why I was so anxious. Much like Dolores's feelings More...

2 comments like (16 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Richard rated it:

I made the mistake of reading Lolita while I was writing my first novel. I promptly decided I was wasting my time. The next morning, I punished myself by typing “I am not Vladimir Nabokov” 100 times with my forehead. I got the message around line 57, and went out to buy a new keyboard.

(Impact rating: 10 out of 10)

(Ranked #1 in my all-time Top-10.)

2 comments like (26 people liked it)

May 06, 2011

Amanda rated it:

In a word: unsettling. Lolita is beautifully written, full of lyrical prose and clever word play, and I commend Nabokov for the obvious skill and talent it took to write a novel in a language other than his native Russian. Having said all of that, no matter how beautiful, how inventive, how genius: I don't want to read about a pedophile, especially from the perspective of a pedophile. There's not a whole lot that I shy away from while reading (all sins are welcome here, for the sake of ente More...

1 comment like (9 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Jessica rated it:

so my boyfriend gets this great film magazine called "little white lies" and each movie they review gets three ratings- one for how much they anticipated it, one for how much they enjoyed watching it, and one for how much staying power it had. i wish we did that with these books, because five stars just doesn't cut it.
anyway, i'd heard so many crazily good things about this book, and then i started reading it and was immediately pissed off. i didn't like the style, i was bored, More...

1 comment like (9 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

John rated it:

In brief, this is the greatest book I have read of the 20th century (it's too hard for me to compare it to pre-20th century literature). I say this because it combines a full array of successful techniques and features that I haven't seen combined in other work; but moreover, in doing so it transcends itself and its subject matter to become true art.

[Possible plot-spoiling follows...]

The most obvious misconception about the book is that it is lewd. Indeed, Nabokov's after More...

2 comments like (10 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Jason rated it:

I never got around to reading the classic Lolita until my mid-thirties, and I'm glad it took so long, because it let me appreciate the novel more for what it actually is -- not just a salacious tale of underage love (although it's that too), but also a darkly funny look at the then-new world of the American highway, and of all the soulless look-alike businesses found along all of its exit ramps. In the original story, our hopeless anti-hero Humbert Humbert is more of a caricature than a real per More...

0 comments like (11 people liked it)

Jul 11, 2011

Chiara rated it:

Inizierò col dire che questo libro s’è tenuto lontano dallo scandalizzarmi. Più che altro mi ha intristito. Man mano che procedevo con la lettura, ho appuntato degli aggettivi sulla quarta di copertina, che ora elenco nell’ordine: seducente, onirico, triste, allucinatorio, delirante.
Certo, sono sicura che nel ’55, quando uscì a Parigi, Lolita fu un clamoroso polverone. Oggi, a distanza di anni, non può non toccare comunque le nostre fibre morali. Ammesso che la letteratura debba essere mor More...

6 comments like (9 people liked it)

Oct 03, 2008

Melissa rated it:

I feel like a mental midget in trying to explain my feelings about this book. I struggle to understand why it is considered such a classic piece of literature. Am I jaded by my own time? Have I heard too often the world "lolita" used in modern contexts to refer to young girls who are attractive to adult men who should know better? I had to delve into some literary criticism in order to help me understand, and I think what Lolita tries to do is tell a disguting story about a disgusting More...

13 comments like (38 people liked it)

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