Why literary critic and professor Nick Mount re-reads Vladimir Nabokov's classic novel Lolita
The author of Arrival: The Story of CanLit talks about his reading practices.
Nick Mount's survey of Canadian literature is titled Arrival: The Story of CanLit. As a literary expert, he re-reads many novels in preparation for his lectures. Of these, one of his favourites to re-read is Vladimir Nabokov's novel, Lolita, less of a chore and more of a delight.
"Lolita is one of those rare books I've probably read 20 times and I still find something to amaze me. It's not the content — the content I'm kind of over. It's the style, it's the words, the way he can put together a sentence. English isn't even Nabokov's first language and he can make a sentence do things in that book that I don't know any other writer is an equal of."
Nick Mount's comments have been edited and condensed.