Rating: 
Summary: Dreary
Review: Nafisi writes a book that might be of interest to high school students of English literature, but even her literature insights are prosaic. Her story of Iran is very dull. Her major act of rebellion was to read "forbidden" books, but people were always free to read them in the privacy of their own homes. Nafisi fails to present any interesting political insights. The result is that she seems unaware, and one suspects this type of mental retreat isn't very healthy.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting, but lacking accessibility
Review: I found Reading Lolita to be a very interesting memoir about the life of women during the Iranian revolution, though it was difficult to read and lacked any profound insights for me. Nafisi starts the story by reliving the experiences she had in a secret book club she had started. She describes how she started this book club after she had lost her teaching job due to her rebellion against the veil and the censoring of her teaching material. After selecting a few girls she knew she could trust, she invited them over for a once a week discussion on a variety of outlawed novels. After describing the terrible hardships the girls went through in their daily lives, the story becomes hard to follow as Nafisi quickly breaks off into an even further past history of her teaching experiences. Throughout the rest of the story she continuously jumps from one time to another and one story to the next, leaving the reader somewhat confused as to what is going on at any particular time. With her frequent references to Islamic political factions and authors I was unfamiliar with, I was quickly lost in her almost haphazard story. The most difficult problem in relating to this text, however, was the fact that Nafisi used the works of other authors to describe her own experiences. This made it feel like I was always missing something that I couldn't understand because I hadn't had enough background in reading. I have never read Austen or Nobokov, and many of Nafisi's references to them were completely over my head. Even her references to The Great Gatsby's Daisy, the one book I had previously read, were still difficult for me to follow. While there was still something to be gained from this book, I felt the greater significance was lost on me. Besides the references and dependence on other works of fiction, there was much to be learned and understood in Reading Lolita. In post 9/11 years, I found this book to bring a refreshingly new perspective on my views of the Middle East and Islam. It gave me a real and personal sense of how women were treated in Iran and what a daily struggle it was for them to even exist. Nafisi describes a world of fear and oppression where young women can be jailed or even executed for simply allowing a strand of hair to fall free of their shroud. This is the world America is familiar with. Yet, she also describes a world of hope and dreams, where forbidden works of fiction helped them to understand life's daily struggles and personal victories. The one redeeming quality about Reading Lolita, was that I was given a sense of what real people are really like in a the middle east, and I was shown a world where young people want to be able to watch cable or even just walk down the street without fear of death. Torn between their patriotism for their country and the tortures of their oppression, their only solaces are their books. So, while the greater significance of Nafisi's extensive references to other works of fiction and her lengthy digressions of past experiences were lost on me, I was still able to appreciate the more superficial aspects of her description of life in Iran.
Rating:
Summary: What a sleeper
Review: This book was one of the worst I've ever read. Nothing like reading a book about other authors works. You would need to have read these other authors in order to understand what she is referring to. She seems obsessed with Nabokov.
Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant
Review: Wendy Susanne Morton,
Brilliant
Brilliantly written memoir that is had to put down once started. Fantastically done book. Highly recommended. I am a memoir/Non Fiction reader and this book ranks up there with some of the best memoirs/autobiographies I have read, namely 'Nightmares Echo', 'A Child Called It', 'Running With Scissors' and 'Lucky'. Read This Book!
Rating:
Summary: Insiteful but too fractious
Review: This book is a real eye opener for anyone who knows nothing of what it's like to live in Iran. The treatment of women is appalling at one point during the when she describes the abuse of innocent women by the Islamic police, I wanted to hop on a plane and find these thugs and beat the crap out of them. Iran is like a page out George Orwell's 1984 come to life. Scary indeed! Her discussion of Nabokov and his book Lolita helped me better understand the inner meaning of the story and it's relevance to close societies like Iran. . I was disappointed that only a small segment of the book deals with Lolita. IMOP the title of the book is a little misleading. While I respect the author and believe in her cause, I thought the book could have been written better. My biggest complaint was how she repeatedly jumps back and forth between decades of time. I found it distracting and disorientating. One moment she's talking about her book club the next moment she is describing her childhood. I also felt historical background on the political changes that have taken place over the past 30 years would have been helpful for those of us who are not students of Iranian history. Even though the book has its shortcomings I would recommend the book to anyone.
Rating: 
Summary: this book sucks
Review: yo I read this for a class on iranian authors and it sucks. its very girly and hard to follow. also you have to have read gatsby, lolita and others to have a clue as to what shes talking about. if you like wordy girly stories about nothing and incoherent, non linear story telling this is for you. along the same lines read persepolis or the bathhouse - both are much better and actually have more insights.
Rating: 
Summary: Challenge and Inspiration
Review: When I started reading "Reading Lolita in Tehran," I really liked the way that Azar Nafisi detailed her secret class, with all the information about each girl and her life. This held my attention and really put a face to a name and an actual human being link to a culture that is, in so many different ways, foreign to what I know and am used to. I enjoyed the beginning of the book because of this passionate look at the lives of some very different people in difficult times. Despite the differences and beliefs they may have had, they found themselves entwined in an intimate relationship - this secret class that at the same time ended up functioning as a book group, counseling session, and meeting between friends that they will likely carry with them for life. Nafisi's personal commentary on her thoughts regarding the girls and her other classes, combined with in depth anecdotes about her students and their actions, provides a first hand look at revolutionary Iran that will be sure to evoke emotion, questions, and reactions to their philosophies. A good amount of these reactions may come from the broad analysis of texts that is included in "Reading Lolita in Tehran." Nafisi focuses on several works of literature that she often relates to current situations to teach their meaning and importance. A reader may find it helpful to have already read some or all of the books that are included, such as "The Great Gatsby" or "Pride and Prejudice" to enhance understanding of Nafisi's subsequent comments. At the same time as this outside text aspect is a good feature of the book, it also can be somewhat of a problem. When I was reading I found that the book occasionally became dry when the focus was too long on the analysis of the other works. I also thought that when Nafisi wrote lengthy amounts on the general events of the revolution or on her university classes that I started to lose interest. What I really would have liked would have been to keep the focus on the small group of girls. This may have made the book shorter, but as a picky reader that's what I would have enjoyed most. Overall, however, "Reading Lolita in Tehran" is a well written memoir that should find a way to inspire or influence thought in its readers in a beneficial manner. I saw many connections to the issues of freedom and opportunity. One of my most prevalent questions was one rooted in a feeling of shame: how could anyone in a country that runs such as ours does be at any time unhappy or feel restricted, when terrible things happen in other countries like Iran all the time? I felt so selfish for my complaints, when the girls in this book couldn't even walk out in the street without the fear of being stopped, searched, interrogated, and at the worst - but entirely possible - killed. I think that Nafisi does a good job of raising issues like these, and especially at a time like the present where there is so much conflict and discord between nations here and on the other side of the world. Readers of "Reading Lolita in Tehran" will undoubtedly come away from the book with their own important challenges to philosophies and ideals, and I think that is the goal of every author!
Rating:
Summary: Reading books about reading books is fun
Review: This book gives the reader a brief introduction to what it is like to be a woman and live in a totalitarian regime. She discusses some great works of fiction which embody some prevalent ideas of those with and those without power in a world that has become too absurd to be fictitious. In the days of the Islamic Revolution in Iran we see a tyrannical regime try to realize the dream of a perfectly pious society. They demonize the Western cultures as the Great Satan and blame anything remotely "different" as an evil seed of the west which in some cases is grounds enough to throw them in a sack and beat them to death with sticks. This is the impression I get about the aspiring leaders of Iran from reading this book, possibly a little biased. In this society where the book on most English professor's syllabuses is Steinbeck's "The Red Pony", the author is attempting to teach American and English literature.
After finally quitting her oppressive job, she forms a reading group to read many of the now illegal works of literature. By explaining the ideas and actions of people in all parts of this society through the themes of novels from western authors like James, Fitzgerald, Austen, and Nabokov, the reader can grasp many ideas that would otherwise be too difficult to deal with. Although of the books discussed I have only read The Great Gatsby, I felt that her discussion of the others was sufficient enough for me to grasp what some of their major themes were. I assume that I would enjoy the book even more if I had read these works, because in the case of "Gatsby," I gained a deeper understanding, but it also serves as a pointer to some great books which I probably will read in the near future. A major theme of this book is the idea of dreams and imagination. In a society where the dream of Islamic perfection has driven many to frenzied devotion, the lesson of the fleeting nature of dreams as presented in Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby," seems extremely appropriate. Gatsby's downfall as he comes closer to touching his dream shows the way in which dreams are only dreams, and the danger in trying to understand them in a reality which does not automatically conform to them. The irony apparent in using Western works like these to portray a society which outlaws them shows the universality of the lessons therein. Someone pursuing a dream of a rich and stylish life is just as culpable as one pursuing the dream of a pious and strict lifestyle. This helps anyone to not simply judge the Islamic regime, but to understand where they are coming from. She juxtaposes this theme with some of the other works which urge people to dream as if it were the only thing that mattered. She presents the importance of forming your own parallel reality in a world where reality is too harsh to be borne straight up. The seemingly contradictory ideas when taken together, though confusing, seem to bolster each other and express a happy medium that cannot be defined.
Overall, I feel like this was a great book. Although the plot is a little convoluted and I could not keep the characters straight, I feel that it expressed the experience of reading a good book through a very good book. I guess that doesn't really make sense unless you read it, maybe not even then. Anyway, I put it down with the impression of having learned more things than I can even attempt to recall. It was an enjoyable read.
Rating:
Summary: Touching, but not without its baggage
Review: From the onset of her book, Professor Nafisi has the reader hooked. She makes the situation in Iraq very clear through the comings and goings of seven women who embark on a literary adventure, reading the forbidden Western classics we so often take for granted in America. The stories of these intelligent and oppressed women seem to weave seamlessly through the plots of the Nabokov, Gatsby, James, and Austen works they read. I found the book touching and necessary in a post 9/11 world. As leery of Arab culture as we are, books on the subject, and narratives in particular, are extremely necessary. However, I found Nafisi's narrative to be lacking in several respects. Nafisi occasionally digresses into literary analysis of many works of literature, which at times becomes a distraction for long periods of time. An understanding of certain works by the aforementioned authors would be an asset to the comprehension of this book and Nafisi's position. I have a feeling that I missed out on a number of allusions because I was unfamiliar with the works she was discussing. Some would argue that she uses these tactics to spark interest in these other works of fiction. While that may have been her intention, I find this distracting. In my opinion, this literary analysis occupies too much space, and I could have done without it. I felt as if a great deal of the book went way over my head because I wasn't familiar with Nabokov's Lolita, or James' Daisy Miller. I found that this book's inaccessibility did not stop there. Her book is full of characters. The problem is that, with Professor Nafisi as perhaps the only exception, all of the characters have very minor roles. It is impossible to keep them all straight. Furthermore, characters don't just make an appearance and leave the plot. Many of her characters continue to reappear again and again in the narrative, and the average reader is left rather puzzled. It is almost as if by this character confusion Nafisi has added an element of Tolstoy's War and Peace to her narrative.
Because these characters come and go with no real pattern, Nafisi also creates the problem of chronology. The time period Nafisi is covering is rather short; only a span of about two years. Her digressions, however, bring the reader back much further in time. With such a short time span for her to cover, and some definite pacing issues, it becomes even more difficult to follow as she travels back and forth in time in the bat of an eye. With this book, it seems as if Nafisi gives us three books in one. We have her political commentary of the time, which gets very confusing when you add the twist of Islam. We have her literary analysis, a bit too convoluted for my taste. And we have the stories of her "girls" as they struggle to fit into the society they find themselves in. Throw all of this in a blender, hit puree, and apparently you have a National Bestseller.
Rating:
Summary: Decent, but lacking.
Review: When I was assigned to read "Reading Lolita in Tehran" for one of my discussions classes, I was under the impression that it would be a profound piece. Perhaps it would be an inspiring story for women, minorities, and other oppressed folks. But on account of my being an American white male, I guess I'll never know. It's not that I'm chauvinistic, coldhearted, or lacking of empathy, but this book really didn't do much for me. While the characters were deeply involving, and the emotions high and clear, there was just too much distance for me to truly relate. Chronicling the book-club meetings of a group of Iranian intellectual women, this narrative looks at life through the author's eyes, seeing her students in a light unlike the world can ever see them. Through their discussions of great classics, such as Pride and Prejudice, Lolita, and The Great Gatsby, they gain a new perspective for life, and a new, strong bond to each other in their trying lives. Despite the depth and extreme amount of potential this book could have had, I found that even shallow, yet important, things such as style and approach really distracted from the focus. Lack of direct dialogue in the text forced it away, making the story more distant, while certain semi-direct quotes were ambiguously present in a manner which may as well have made them indirect dialogues. I'm quite sure that the author had her reasons in writing the book in this manner. Obviously, writing a memoir of events a good fifteen years removed is not an easy task, and each conversation could not have been remembered perfectly to produce genuine dialogues. Add to this that many of the details surrounding the characters have been rearranged, jumbled, and negotiated for reasons of confidentiality and of course you can't expect perfect dialogues. Additionally, a chronological hodge-podge and a leap-frogging story line was equally distracting from the story. While the book on the whole seemed to follow a more or less linear timescale, the book-meetings in the story were interspersed with personal storylines and memories that fit, but somehow were lacking in direction. All in all it was a decent book, with a decent message, at a decently understandable level. But in my opinion it could've been a whole lot better.
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