the book bum

Tragedies make me so happy      Merely reading and reviewing Lolita was not enough for me...I had to go and write a 10-page senior project about the book, as well!  Writing this paper has obliged me to research and read Nabokov-centric literary criticism, interviews, annotations, and more. So if any of you are looking to learn more about Lolita , here is a list of resources I've used in the process of writing my paper. Enjoy! (Or don't...not everyone likes MLA citations.) Books Nabokov, Vladimir.  The Annotated Lolita.  Ed. Alfred Appel, Jr. New York: Vintage Books, 1991. Criticism Hall, Chris. “The Significance of Names In The Fiction of Martine Amis, Vladimir Nabokov, John Kennedy Toole, Joseph Heller, Samuel Beckett, John Updike, Will Self, Umberto Eco: Waiting for Go.Dot.”  Spike Magazine . Spike Magazine, 1 Aug. 1996. Web. 29 Mar. 2016. Lemay, Eric. “Dolorous Laughter.”  Zemlarchive . Zemlarchive, n.d. Interviews Br...

     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...