I've always thought of Lolita as an exercise for Nabokov. "How can I make the most horrid human being sympathetic?" And he almost does it; that's sort of the brilliance of the book. But as a reader, the experience of becoming sympathetic is a total mindfuck. You have to detach yourself, which can be difficult,…

Ugh, every hipster teenager on Tumblr who has never actually read the book likes to think of it as "romantic". It's disgusting and I actually could not finish it, because it made my skin crawl.

Then you are the arrogant asshole that defines my generation and why my generation is thought of as arrogant, entitled, and judgmental.

I think of it as this generations Sex in the City.

Where'd You Go Bernadette was the most fun I had reading a book in a LONG time. It's my go-to recommendation for anyone who is looking for something really really good, but really really fun too.

I just can't with Lolita anymore. I remember people at my university saying that the way the pedo talked about Lolita was "so romantic". Then I barfed. Can't a literary per on explain to me why it is such a good book?

I find that she is a pretty accurate portrayal of that generation or at least the minority that defines that generation. They tend to say things they think are brilliant without thinking how they offend others. Their statements are based of zero real lived experiences.

Please tell me that's a transcribing error, and she said "illicit". Because otherwise that's a nonsense sentence. With the correct homophone though, even though it sounds pretentious that's a pretty spot-on explanation of 50 Shades' lack of appeal.

Doesn't make the editorial staff of The Believer look very good, either; I'm pretty sure the word they're looking for there is "illicit."

*high five*

Speaking as a Dunham hater, you are correct. This is why I dislike her so strongly.

This made me LOL. Headline should have been "Awful Diet Pills Got a Woman Committed, But Not Before She Lost 15 Pounds!"

To be fair to Moffat (something I almost never say), it was in response to a question where someone explicitly asked him about Matt being on Sherlock yesterday during a post "His Last Vow" screening. He didn't just say it apropos of nothing, and it sounds like a pretty noncommittal answer to me.

I'm struggling to find words to convey how fantastic that "No Sugar Added" line on the lemonade poster is. I think I love it because it illustrates the sanctimonious ignorance that drives Paltrow's worldview better than any diatribe I could come up with.

FWIW: a warped object in a photograph is not necessarily indication of Photoshop. In fact, depending on the angle of the shot, excessively straight lines may be indications of Photoshop. Why? Because camera lenses are curved but the output (the image) is flat. It's somewhat similar to how Earth maps never match up to…

This still makes me happy to read.

You put this all really well.

I was one of the people who were on the internet before their was a "world wide web".

Part of what is so infuriating is the thought that the online harassment of women is revealing of the misogyny in our culture. In person, most of these men would never say such vile things, but far away and obscured by a computer screen and anonymity, they feel they can say what they really want to say. And what they…

This is like, an amplified version of being a woman in the world in real life, who speaks. When we are walking around afraid of being yelled at when we refuse advances, or told to shut up in a work meeting - this is the same fucking thing, those same fucking guys - probably getting off on yelling at women, because…