The biggest selling, most notorious book by one of my favorite writers.  Creating a major scandal as a pornographic pedophilic outrage, Nabokov’s story of Humbert Humbert, PhD a 40’ish Swiss professor who is crazed with passionate love and desire for a 13 year old nymphet, Dolores Haze of Rainsdale, NY shocked the literary world in the mid-1950’s.  Totally tame today, it is paradoxically mundane in a day of child beauty pageants while outrageous in a day of pedophilic Catholic priests and child porn.  Nabokov’s book, however, is universal in its exploration of unrequited passion and love and how it destroys the lover as well as the beloved.  The beauty and joy of the work is in its caressing detail and magnificent language—the ‘nerves of the novel’, its ‘secret points’, and ‘subliminal coordinates.’  Characters like Charlotte Haze, Clare Quilty, Rita, Valeria, etc.  His reference to one of the books ‘he’s reading in prison, Who’s Who in the Limelight with a reference to Cla ire Quilty which follows a reference toa book by Percy Elphinstone (the town where Quilty kidnaps Lolita) and his recitation of the hotel ledger references as he tracks down Lolita are brilliant touches.  An amazing tour de force of description and language.