The New Year's Resolution Is Maintenance

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"I assume that I just left the car unlocked when I unloaded the last of the Christmas. Somebody somebody got into our car and took not all the change, but all the quarters," he says. "My resolution is to tread water. My resolution is to undo like some of this year."

Usually books try to make you root for the protagonist. Even if he or she is flawed in some crucial way, most stories try to make you feel something for the person whose mind you're inhabiting. That is not the case in Vladmir Nabokov's Lolita.

This week we share with you an uncomfortable discussion about how it feels to read a book told from the perspective of an unrepentant pedophile—how do you feel about him? How do we feel about him? How does he feel about him? The difficult subject matter is just one of the things that has earned Lolita its place in the literary canon.

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