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Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
by Azar Nafisi

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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7603.Reading_Lolita_in_Tehran_A_Memoir_in_Books?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165637149m/7603.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7603.Reading_Lolita_in_Tehran_A_Memoir_in_Books?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5151.Azar_Nafisi">Azar Nafisi</a><br/><br/>
  <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7953352?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
  rating: 5 of 5 stars<br/>10.19.07 <br/>Listening to books rocks! yay. <br/>I began this book once before - in printed form - and must have gotten distracted, or moved on to something else. I can kind of see how that might have happened; if i were not doing something else simultaneously, this time around, i might again find the book a little slow and time-consuming.  but since i am working anyway, i keep listening, and i am glad, because there are segments of the book that are so revealing (to someone like me) and insightful about women's experiences living under a totalitarian regime that devalues all females. basically, i hadn't realized (or maybe hadn't thought about, because it is not convenient or easy to think about) what women suffer in some societies...being policed and criticized at every turn and made to bow down to a man, any man, EVERY man. <br/>I absolutely love the way that, in the book, the author uses her insights on works of literature to help describe the collective and individual emotional experiences of Iranian women.  and i love it that in the book she describes her work with female and male students... how they read these novels together, and they encouraged one another to explore and express their own feelings and ideas, relevant and irrelevant to the literature. and i love it that the author combined these different types of insight, these different stories: that of her personal love for the novels, that of the reading group, and that of the ebb and flow of religion's grip on state, specifically in Iran in this period of time, but also, generally, in the world...which, sort of creates the opposite effect of a good novel: the scope of perception is narrowed, critical thinking is discouraged, and aesthetics are trumped by restraint. i cannot imagine a world without doors that open to the turn of a page.
  <br/><br/><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/342389?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Sarah's review
rating:

bookshelves: and-re-read-just-because
status: Read in October, 2008

10.19.07
Listening to books rocks! yay.
I began this book once before - in printed form - and must have gotten distracted, or moved on to something else. I can kind of see how that might have happened; if i were not doing something else simultaneously, this time around, i might again find the book a little slow and time-consuming. but since i am working anyway, i keep listening, and i am glad, because there are segments of the book that are so revealing (to someone like me) and insightful about women's experiences living under a totalitarian regime that devalues all females. basically, i hadn't realized (or maybe hadn't thought about, because it is not convenient or easy to think about) what women suffer in some societies...being policed and criticized at every turn and made to bow down to a man, any man, EVERY man.
I absolutely love the way that, in the book, the author uses her insights on works of literature to help describe the collective and individual emotional experiences of...more

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