Lolita

[Bysshe]

Thank you for the advice! I'll take a look at the Lolita discussions.

[JCamilo]

Yeah, the problem of Lolita is nowhere related to the sexual content, in fact, today the book would be probally less rated than a Britney Spears music video...
It is getting Nabokov, his sarcasm and irony, his critic to psychology (he hated Freud with all strength of intelect) and all in all, the trip he does to write a road book, his literary references...

By the way, there is no wrong age to read a book. If you can enjoy beauty, you can enjoy a book.

[PeterL]

If you are old enough to fully appreciate Ulysses, then you are old enough to appreciate Lolita. The sexual content in negligible.

[F.Emerald]

Bysshe, you remind me so much of me when I was 15! We're both from London for a start, and I actually read Lolita when I was 15, and it's still one of my all time favourites. I think that if I could appreciate it then, you definitely could. Maybe you should read a couple of Nabokov's short stories first, to get a taste of his style maybe? (which is very inspirational indeed), they're worth reading too, The Admiralty Spire in particular.

Let me know how it goes.

[grace86]

Go ahead and read it. I think you will be just fine.

[botkin]

I first read it when I was 14, and understood it pretty well, but not very completely. I think you'll get the story, and appreciate the monstruosity of H.H. and Nabokov's beautiful prose, but PLEASE read it again in a few years. When I reread it at 18 (and again this january) the book seemed so much richer, the shadows so much darker, so much deeper. It's grown as I've grown, and that's not happened with a lot of books I've read.

As for the funny looks, I'm 21 and my father almost had a seizure when he saw me reading it. People ignorant of the story will always overreact. Pay them no heed and enjoy your book

[Bysshe]

Thank you...I'm not sure if I'm "old enough to fully appreciate Ulysses", but I'll give it a go anyway.

Thanks for the short story recommendation too, F.Emerald. I'll see if the library has any collections of his short stories before I borrow Lolita.

And I think I'll definitely consider re-reading it later. There are some books I've read over the past couple of years that I'm already re-reading, and I'll probably continue to re-read them on a regular basis. I can imagine that Lolita would be one of those books that needs to be read again.

Fingers crossed my parents don't have seizures! Thanks again, everyone.

[Isagel]

I think Botkin gives good advice. I suspect that this is a book that you read from different perspectives at different ages. I also think that it is hard to say if there is a right way of understanding a book - but we experience the story in different ways because we have different knowledge, and experience. There might be things in Lolita that a teenager would understand differently than me, who read it late.

[Cien]

I read Lolita when I was fifteen. It is one of my favorite books, though I (as somebody who is primarily interested in older men and always has been) dislike the way it bastardizes any attraction an adult may have towards a minor.

Anyway, yes, you should read Lolita. Don't sell yourself short because of your age. It's not becoming. It may make older people like you more on ocassion, but it's not worth it.

[Pensive]

I know that there are some books that you probably can't properly appreciate till you're slightly older.

Generally speaking, I think you are quite right. But as Logos has already mentioned, there are some people who would not appreciate a good book even at the age of forty or more.

So why wait for the time when you will be able to fully appreciate it? As far as your age goes - I think that at fifteen, a person is quite conscious of what is happening around him/her. This is the age when you learn things, and you are highly observant of all that is happening around you. This is the time when questions are bugging in your mind, and you have to learn to hear people's answers of those questions without following them all. Reading books, like Lolita, Mein Kampf, etc, is the same matter. When you will read them, your mind will be full of questions, and there are chances that the book will influence you but if you are strong enough to crush that influence and instead just take the book as an opinion, not as a fact, it will be better.

I mean in this way, the book will be like another person giving his/her opinion about a certain matter or telling a tale to you of her/his/its life. And at the age of fifteen, with all things at the open (like drug use in schools), one should be able to form his/her own opinion rather than be influenced by a certain book without a thorough understanding.

So all I can say is that you should read the book if you want to, but don't be too sure about "inspiration" without having read the book.

[Bysshe]

Thank you. I think I will take it out, and maybe I'll post here when I've read it and tell you what I thought...

[NewAgewriter389]

The writer Humbert knew who he was but never told the audience who he was, he made the audience feel as much as he did. And even when Lolita told him who it was, he did not tell the reader and still left us wondering.

I just finished the book on my second day at almost 3 AM and felt kinda confused. i figured Quilty was the one who "rescued" (as Humbert Humbert would sarcastically say..) her, and that he saw her by accident. was he the guy that at one point ni the book was smiling and looking at Hubert with a weird look or something, after he had found her on the bed and thought that she had cheated on him, and did she ever cheat? al in al, what i am trying to say, was Quilty also like himbert? Confused reader here...

[PeterL]

I just finished the book on my second day at almost 3 AM and felt kinda confused. i figured Quilty was the one who "rescued" (as Humbert Humbert would sarcastically say..) her, and that he saw her by accident. was he the guy that at one point ni the book was smiling and looking at Hubert with a weird look or something, after he had found her on the bed and thought that she had cheated on him, and did she ever cheat? al in al, what i am trying to say, was Quilty also like himbert? Confused reader here...

It's easy to be confused about that. Quilty and Humbert were different aspects of the same person.

[JuLe]

Lolita is on my summer reading list, I hope that someone will buy me this book for my birthday. I heard only really good comments about the book.
Amy Tan has even dedicated a full chapter to this book in her novel "The opposite of fate".

[Nossa]

I haven't read Lolita, though I was familiar with its name and its author. I'd like to comment on the point of how the book was labeled as "dirty" and "bad" and that it was banned from some countries. I find it rather irritating when authorities decide to ban a certain book, based on assumptions that it might do harm to certain notions that has been established in the society. People would NEVER forgive a pedophile , but that doesn't mean that doesn't mean that we should ban ANY book talking about the subject, it's simply wrong. This happened before with ana arabic novel written by Naguin Mahfouz in Egypt in the 50s (Children of Gebelawi)..and it was banned, till just THIS year, when it was firstly published. I had the chance to get the book and started reading, and I found that many of the claims some people made about how the book insults God and prophets, were merely out of THIER own interpretation. I mean, isn't it an essential thing for a literary book to bare more than one interpretation?! I read a part of the book now, and I don't find it insulting. Sorry for being off point, but this IS affilliated with what we're discussing here.
The fact that Nabokov succeeded in making you feel sorry for such a person,whom people normaly regard as a bastard who should be shot, this should be looked upon as a sign of that man's greatness, not to ban the book!! At least give the people the chance to decide for themselves, without shoving opinions down thier throats. That's what I think.