I can't wait to read Lolita, because the way Nabokov creates images with his words is astounding. His metaphor for the creative process of an author in the second paragraph on page two jumped out and grabbed me.
"That mist is a mountain- and that mountain must be conquered. Up a trackless slope climbs the master artist, and at the top, on a windy ridge, whom do you think he meets? The panting and happy reader, and there they spontaneously embrace and are linked forever if the book lasts forever."
This is absolutely fantastic; I could never in a thousand years put into words anything this exquisite my feelings for reading a book that I end up loving for all time, yet here they are, written for me. I think that if you read a book and you do end up loving it, you keep it with you for the rest of your life. After you make that journey into the world the author has created and explored it extensively, I don't think that it's possible to not make a little bit of that book a part of you. I also agree with Nabokov when he says a good reader should use "impersonal imagination and artistic delight." In this way, we really can explore new worlds when we read. Anything the author might create is a possibility as long as we're not trying to make direct correlations in the writing to our lives. It's not to say that you shouldn't try making connections between your life and what you read, but you'd have a hard time of it with a fantasy novel, especially if that's the only thing you were trying to do. Getting lost in the world of another's imagination is a wonderful experience. Now I've gotten into paragraph four on page four, which is also fantastic and I highly agree with it.
Basically, I love reading and I'm really happy that I agree with Nabokov and his standards for reading and writing.
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