Scan barcode
rebeccazh's reviews
2837 reviews
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
So, after many years, I finally read this book. I think all that I want to say has been said already, but here are my thoughts: I love Nabokov's writing. Reading Humbert Humbert's narration repels but attracts me; it's beautiful, and it makes me so grossed out that such a disgusting topic can be made so beautiful.
Lolita, the girl, is both the Other and the Object. I distrust every claim Humbert Humbert makes about her -- he has never seen her; he only sees her as an object of desire/dream made flesh. Poor girl. It boils my blood to see articles or people claim that this is a love story. It emphatically is not. Occasional hints of truth peek out from Humbert Humbert's slippery narration, where he says things like:
"This was an orphan. This was a lone child, an absolute waif, with whom the heavy-limbed, foul-smelling adult had had strenuous intercourse three times that very morning."
I mean. You can't get clearer than that. But looking at the reception to this book, the fact that 'Lolita' has come to stand in for a sexually precocious girl, just disgusts me. It's a special kind of awful that we're in a world where a self-professed paedophile and murderer is romanticized as a tragic but devoted sort of lover, because we're so used to romanticizing possessive/abusive/controlling behavior by men. Or that girls want to be that nymphet/sexual siren Humbert claims twelve-year-old Lolita is. Because the thing about Lolita is that she is attractive to Humbert not for her sexual precociousness; it's precisely because she is not sexually mature that he lusts after her.
This novel really reminds me of an outsider's view (an outsider who found a home) of America, because of Nabokov's enamoured/fascinated, love-hate relation to American consumerism: the post-WWII culture of bad TV, consumer goods, jukeboxes, bad movies... Love the jabs he took at Freud. I can't stand Freud. The world Nabokov depicts is quintessentially American: even young girls are consumer goods.
Lolita, the girl, is both the Other and the Object. I distrust every claim Humbert Humbert makes about her -- he has never seen her; he only sees her as an object of desire/dream made flesh. Poor girl. It boils my blood to see articles or people claim that this is a love story. It emphatically is not. Occasional hints of truth peek out from Humbert Humbert's slippery narration, where he says things like:
"This was an orphan. This was a lone child, an absolute waif, with whom the heavy-limbed, foul-smelling adult had had strenuous intercourse three times that very morning."
I mean. You can't get clearer than that. But looking at the reception to this book, the fact that 'Lolita' has come to stand in for a sexually precocious girl, just disgusts me. It's a special kind of awful that we're in a world where a self-professed paedophile and murderer is romanticized as a tragic but devoted sort of lover, because we're so used to romanticizing possessive/abusive/controlling behavior by men. Or that girls want to be that nymphet/sexual siren Humbert claims twelve-year-old Lolita is. Because the thing about Lolita is that she is attractive to Humbert not for her sexual precociousness; it's precisely because she is not sexually mature that he lusts after her.
This novel really reminds me of an outsider's view (an outsider who found a home) of America, because of Nabokov's enamoured/fascinated, love-hate relation to American consumerism: the post-WWII culture of bad TV, consumer goods, jukeboxes, bad movies... Love the jabs he took at Freud. I can't stand Freud. The world Nabokov depicts is quintessentially American: even young girls are consumer goods.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
read baskerville, sign of the four and the final problem for school
Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
finished this in one afternoon. i really enjoyed this! it's quite different from the first book (what i remember of it anyway) but this book was very atmospheric and captured the feeling of a fairytale well.
i didn't really like the number of characters narrating. i'm really not a fan of ensemble casts. this book starts out with a single first person narrator and it then branches out into five(?) first-person perspectives. further confusing things is the fact that the narrators of each new scene aren't labelled so i had to guess. i really liked one of later additions to the cast though. the tsar's chapters were very entertaining. also, nearly all the female characters were women or girls who had little power or choice over their lives and they had fathers, husbands or lords who made choices for them, who then began to work together.
i liked the motif of giving/receiving (for free or for a price) and i wish we could've seen how love works in the staryk kingdom (which i found very interesting because it's a society based totally on transactions and i wish it was explored in more detail). also, i wish the whole book was focused on miryem because her chapters were the most compelling. i skimmed a lot of the other subplots.
there was also a motif about coldness of heart / being calculating vs. being overly indulgent / soft-hearted. being able to shut off one's heart is associated with personal power, such as being able to stand up for oneself and protect one's best interests, and being soft-hearted was portrayed as a weakness as it allowed others to take advantage of oneself (i thought at first that miryem's arc would be about balancing these two opposing viewpoints but it wasn't), and i kind of wish that had been explored as well.
overall, i really like novik's fairytale series and hope she does more stuff like this
i didn't really like the number of characters narrating. i'm really not a fan of ensemble casts. this book starts out with a single first person narrator and it then branches out into five(?) first-person perspectives. further confusing things is the fact that the narrators of each new scene aren't labelled so i had to guess. i really liked one of later additions to the cast though. the tsar's chapters were very entertaining. also, nearly all the female characters were women or girls who had little power or choice over their lives and they had fathers, husbands or lords who made choices for them, who then began to work together.
i liked the motif of giving/receiving (for free or for a price) and i wish we could've seen how love works in the staryk kingdom (which i found very interesting because it's a society based totally on transactions and i wish it was explored in more detail). also, i wish the whole book was focused on miryem because her chapters were the most compelling. i skimmed a lot of the other subplots.
there was also a motif about coldness of heart / being calculating vs. being overly indulgent / soft-hearted. being able to shut off one's heart is associated with personal power, such as being able to stand up for oneself and protect one's best interests, and being soft-hearted was portrayed as a weakness as it allowed others to take advantage of oneself (i thought at first that miryem's arc would be about balancing these two opposing viewpoints but it wasn't), and i kind of wish that had been explored as well.
overall, i really like novik's fairytale series and hope she does more stuff like this
Spin the Dawn by Elizabeth Lim
3.0
Another fast and entertaining read. This is supposed to be a Chinese-inspired fantasy but it's very 'lite'. I enjoyed the folklore and quest parts and will probably check out the sequel.
The Oxygen Advantage: The Simple, Scientifically Proven Breathing Techniques for a Healthier, Slimmer, Faster, and Fitter You by Patrick McKeown
3.0
really good tips but this author was repeating the same point for four hundred pages. this could have been 80-100 pages.
Echo in Onyx by Sharon Shinn
4.0
sharon shinn is back at it with another series with a very intriguing set-up. i devoured this trilogy and the first-person narration works really well.