I picked up this book at 1/2 Price books in Houston, because I have Reading Lolita in Tehran and I had it on good authority that I would understand and enjoy that book more if I had read this one...so, there you have it.

I can't say I liked this book, that would be akin to "likin" In Cold Blood or Helter Skelter -- great books, but disturbing...this one falls in that category for me. Nabakov nailed the persona of a pedofile -- and had some disturbing images (like when our "hero" talks about marrying Lolita so they can have a child...Lolita 2) -- The style is beautiful, one day when I get fluent in Russian I will have to find one of his books in Russian -- would love to see how he does with his native tongue.

I can't say I didn't like it -- it has some beautiful images, and it is a tale of obsession that I think says a lot about our world.

I can say the Vanity Fair critic who claimed it to be "The only convincing love story of our century." must have been on crack. Seriously?? this is not a story of love, it is a story of obsession and manipulation -- for sure not a love story. I also have some issues with the Time critic who said "Intensely lyrical and wildly funny" -- lyrical I can go with, but WILDLY FUNNY??? it has some humorous lines, but anyone who can see a pedofile and his victim as wildly funny has some serious issues.

My husband wants to read this before reading RLIT as well.

So, this is how much I liked this book...when husband started reading it, he discovered several pages duplicated (yeah, I noticed that...I just skipped the duplicates and kept reading) -- yeah, the duplicates were IN PLACE of actual pages, so something like 30 pages were missing from the story, and I DIDN'T NOTICE...yeah, that good a book. Anyway, HE wanted to read ALL the pages, go figure...so after much time, and a few emails to Random House, I sent back the bad book (that would be the one I got from 1/2 Price Books -- I scratched out the BCID, as I didn't think it would go back into circulation...with plans to reuse the BCID for this book)

Now, this goes against Bookcrossing etiquette..one book = one BCID...but as the old one was not suitable for reading, and it is likely in the recycle bin now (I hope book publishers recycle) I don't have any ethical issues with reissuing the same number for the same story...if not the same book.

Okay, that was a long entry, but now my husband can have the book back. :-)

Will soon be headed to stellamaris23