The book "Lolita" is the worst book I've ever read in my entire life

sehunicx

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So I did know about this book called Lolita or whatever but I was never interested enough to look for it and read it

And so, 3 weeks ago I was bored and decided to finally read this book. And let me tell you first of all, I am in shock that this book is considered to be one of the finest works in English literature. The writing is so pretentious that it made me roll my eyes several times

First of all, all that fancy writing could not make up for that DISGUSTING plot. I was extremely uncomfortable several times while readin that I had to stop and rest and calm down. The writer of this book should be on a watch-list

And the writing. My god is the writing so pretentious. There is a line in the book which I don't remember really but the writer instead of saying simply "the beach" he said "the plage"

I had no idea plage was an English word??? Isn't it just beach in french? Why say plage? You trynna sound smart???

I hate writers who use fancy words just to sound smart. If you're good at writing you're good with common words

Stupid headass. I hate this book
 

spo

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It's supposed to make you uncomfortable. The main character is a pedophile and a monster. The language isn't supposed to come from the author, Nabokov, but from Humbert, who's an unreliable narrator. If you didn't quite understand the novel, I highly, highly recommend reading some essays on it. You're not actually supposed to take it at face value.
 

LaJetée

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It's supposed to make you uncomfortable. The main character is a pedophile and a monster. The language isn't supposed to come from the author, Nabokov, but from Humbert, who's an unreliable narrator. If you didn't quite understand the novel, I highly, highly recommend reading some essays on it. You're not actually supposed to take it at face value.
This.
People not understanding that Humbert is supposed to be a reprehensible unreliable narrator is the reason "Lolita" is now synonymous with "young seductress" in pop culture instead of "underage rape and abuse victim." The depictions of Dolores in adaptions and Lolita's impact on pop culture says a lot about the pedophile culture we live in.

That being said I 100% agree that it is a genuinely unpleasant book to read and I'll never even so much as pick it up again lol.
 

crazykuroneko

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i think i just read it halfway then never read it again. it's hard to read it because Humbert is just too disgusting
I did need to take a lot of breaks too to read it. But that's how pedophiles should be portrayed in media: disgusting
 

Danee

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Like... Its not romance. I dont know what have you expected. The story as whole is supposed to be disturbing, not something to dream about. Not sure why or how some people try to see it as "sexy".

I havent read it in original but only translation, so I cannot really talk about language used. But the book is from 1955. Language changed and evolved. The book stayed as it is. Words that arent used at all could have been heavily used back then.
 
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yerm

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I've never read it but yeah, I'm sure it's meant to make you uncomfortable. And I don't think it was originally written in English (wasn't the dude Russian?) so the pretentious language is a combination of the translator and the era it was written in. I'd still like to investigate it since it's such an important piece of literature, but I don't think I'm planning to read it anytime soon.
 
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