"I read this book in high school when it was first published. It had the reputation of being “dirty.” It did not disappoint: I was all of 14. It was also deliciously funny. It still is. Its status is secure and I doubt there’s a “Best” list it’s not on. It’s wildly romantic, scathingly satiric of middle-class Americans as only a European aristocrat can see us, and ultimately deeply moving. Lolita is the light of everyone’s loins. Humbert Humbert’s despair is anyone’s who has loved and lost in vain. Nabokov “gets” America and Americans. He is one of the great writers in English and it wasn’t even his first language."

"'The waves fell; withdrew and fell again, like the thud of a great beast stamping.” Woolf’s strangest book by far, a cascade of gorgeous monologues, six friends meeting over the course of their lives. The characters emerge through their voices, through the eyes of the others. Each suffers separately. Loss, loneliness, depression vibrate on the page, among the indelible images, all within a frame of stunning brief descriptions of the sun’s passage and the sea’s pounding. It’s partly the twilight of the British Empire, but mostly a brooding meditation on language and love. Bernard, the writer, delivers the great summation. Nothing happens except life."