Lolita

Many people think of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita as a pretty decent reason to get a Kindle- it's regarded as a masterpiece of fiction, but still about a topic that's very taboo to this day, with pretty good reason. It's basically 'Pedophile: the Novel." I mean, you probably don't want to google the word 'Lolita' and yet here I am posting about it on the Blog. The books tells the story of Humbert Humbert (all names are changed, sometimes in wacky ways, even though the book is completely fictional), a middle aged man who had a traumatizing experience in his youth that has left him with an obsession with young girls. It'd be easy for Nabokov to make Humbert a creepy, unsympathetic character, but he ditches the creepy old man stereotype for a charismatic womanizer. Women Humbert's own age fall in love with him and he ends up marrying a few of them, but his pedophilia doesn't stop. Eventually when his second wife dies he is given custody of her daughter, 12 year old Lolita, which is basically insanity. He's so overjoyed that he doesn't even know what to do with himself, panicking and taking a several years long road trip across America with Lolita, taking up the bulk of the book. The book thankfully doesn't get graphic, but there's enough hinting about Humbert and Lolita's exploits to make things uncomfortable. That said, I'm pretty sure you'll find way worse stuff happening in Naked Lunch, but while the villains in that book are emotionless kill and rape machines, Humbert's horrible qualities in Lolita are given more subtlety, with Humbert openly asking for forgiveness during his narration. It's an interesting book about a subject that so frequently gets swept under the rug to the point where no one wants to talk about it, and while Lolita didn't really blow me away, I think it's worth a read.