Now that I've finished applying to colleges, I'm back to blogging! Sorry for the hiatus. I read Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, the tragic story of a pedophile's obsession with a little girl, this fall and it blew my mind. I read it twice before purchasing an annotated version, which revealed to me how intricate the book really is. I picked up on the protagonist's manipulation of language in order to warp the truth on my own, but not until I read the annotations did I notice Nabokov's use of involution or literary allusions. This may sound a bit pretentious, but it was so satisfying to understand all the tricks at work in the writing. So I've compiled a cheat sheet/list of some motifs, devices, and patterns to look for when reading Lolita. 1. Colors: Especially patterns of colors surrounding certain characters or emotions. 2. Quilty: It's an important name and it appears in dif...