To discuss your weekly readings of books, textbooks, papers, etc.
I started Lolita this week, I’m currently on page 61. I have no idea why some people believe this is a p-do apologia, it took me only 10 pages to feel completely disgusted by Humbert Humbert, especially when he started talking about his “nymphets” 
. But as with Charles Kinbote, I have to say Humbert is a super funny narrator, the way he trashes Mrs Haze at every opportunity, so bitchy and so manipulative lmao, which makes him much scarier than Kinbote, who was unmistakably a schizo to everyone around him.
Sometimes I can’t believe Nabokov was Russian, his dominion over the English Language is quite impressive, even if he grew up in a trilingual environment, typical of the Russian aristocracy.
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I finished The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy G. Kay. I posted a couple weeks ago that it was anime but for women and that's still true. He basically managed to write an occasionally intriguing alt-world novel about (not) Spain at the start of the (not) crusades. However, every good part of it is surrounded by either an epic girl boss moment or the main woman, a (not) jew, being all emotional and irrational about whether she should bang a sexy (not) spaniard or a sexy (not) moor. There were a few well done scenes, and he can do suspense well when he tries, but frick him for using misleading PoV to create false tension. It felt very cheap, especially in the climax. Overall I would rate it reddit/10 and say that it has made me like women less despite being written by a (not) man.
P.S. the s*x scenes made my skin crawl
P.P.S. I am not just seething because the sexy man I liked more lost
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