Wow. This was my first experience with Nabokov, and it's one I won't soon forget. I've never seen such a display of prosaic wit and allusion.

It's a shame that he (like Burgess) is mostly known as a guy who wrote a controversial book that got made into a Kubrick film. There's so, so much more there. ( )

In a recent poll of authors ranking their favorite books, Lolita came in number 4 behind Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, and War And Peace (nice going Leo by the way). Nabokov is one of the greatest writers of the last or any century and this is his masterpeace. Made into a great,great movie by Stanley Kubrik starring the incomperable James Mason. ( )

Best book. ( )

Highly recommend the annotated edition: it brought this difficult book to life for me. The introduction is especially good. ( )

A review in two parts:
1) The Annotation. In short - worth it. For someone new to Nabokov, and to Lolita, this can be hugely helpful. The annotations are extensive (excessive? maybe) and constantly flipping to the endnotes can be annoying. However, the annoyance is totally worth it - Appel does a great job identifying Nabokov's brilliant wordplay. Since I am not as clever as Nabokov, and my vocabulary is significantly smaller, the annotations really helped me appreciate his genius. FWIW, I first read Lolita in Appel's class in college, and he definitely knows this book.
2) Lolita itself. Love, love, love this book. Love the humor, love the descriptions of America in the late 40s and 50s, even love Humbert Humbert. Again, the wordplay is fantastic - its hard to believe that English wasn't even Nabokov's first language, it is so completely his plaything. Read this! And then go read Pale Fire, and Speak, Memory! ( )