Lolita

Between the Covers After re-reading "Lolita", I asked my local bookseller if she'd 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 exch Leggi tutto

Pushing the boundaries of what acceptable literature can actually be, Lolita is very much a piece of art. For many years I kept hearing about this book, the content sounding disturbing and perhaps even slightly fascinating. It’s a book that’s central theme is one of the darkest elements of mankind: Leggi tutto

Now, this is going to be embarrassing to admit. As we all should know, reading and enjoying a book is largely about interpretation. People are not the same and we all view things differently; one individual might see a relationship in a book as "passionate" while another could see it as "damaging". W Leggi tutto

when i first read this book, i hated every second of it. while i pride myself on being a reader who can distinguish between narrator and author (a media literacy skill that, much like common sense, the concept of a secret, and outhouses, seems to be going extinct with modernity), i could not bear thi Leggi tutto

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 certa Leggi tutto

Update: 06/07/2020 Having just finished A Dark Vanessa, a book I rated 5 stars I am even more certain of my hatred of this book. Any book where the reader is forced to feel empathy for a pedophile just doesn’t do it for me. You can call me narrow minded if you like but if it were up to me they would Leggi tutto

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, inde Leggi tutto