Rating: 
Summary: Good book but slow read
Review: We picked this book as a bookclub choice earlier this year. Though well written and a great book overall, it is a very slow read. I would definitely recommend this book, but it is probably not the best choice for a young women's bookclub.
Rating: 
Summary: A fantastic journey of a book
Review: I understand the criticisms of the other reviews on this memoir, but feel strongly about the book's importance in the growing dialogue about our country's role in the personal/religious lives of individuals. It seems that any regime's attempt to turn fundamentalist beliefs (Christianity/Islam/pick your faith) into LAW forces citizens to live in fiction. A government's narrow conception of my personal life is not compatible with reality. The law or moral police can force us to fictionalize our public persona, but inside my robe, inside my home, inside my mind - this is real. The author asks us, 'what is fiction?'. Can you confine it to fit reality?. I absolutely loved this book. I found the literary references enlightening. The timeline of the chapters and references required my attention, but it was one of the best reads I've had in a long time!
Rating: 
Summary: Women's Rights
Review: I read all of the previous reviews to see if there was anyone who had a similar reaction. I find the book fascinating, hard to put down but at the same time very frightening. Frightening in the similar ways our current government is to that of Iran's. How women are losing their reproductive rights. In that anyone who dares to disagree with the current adminstration are labelled "terrorists". How the current adminstration is doing it's best to blur the lines of seperation of church and state. I found the book very moving. It should be read by every one who is interested in the role literature plays in life.
Rating:
Summary: life reflected in literature..........
Review: Author Azar Nafisi's memoir recounts her life in Tehran during a time of upheaval and oppression, especially she feels of the women. She was a professor of Western Literature and as her world comes under attack she seems to actively retreat into a world of classic literature and it's interpretation and application to the conditions in Tehran. When her professorship is terminated she begins a study group in her home, which is where we are introduced to and get to know a bit about the lives of several young women living under these religious/political restrictions imposed upon the society of Iran. While many are placing their lives directly on the line to try and change the face of Tehran, Nafisi plants the seeds of hope and possibility in the minds of her students
in her book group.
The classics that they read make interesting "companion reads" to this novel, and while you may have read them in high school or college, it is never too late to read them again. Some of the titles are LOLITA, THE GREAT GATSBY, WASHINGTON SQUARE and PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. The familiarity of the reader with these works while not necessary, will add a depth of understanding to the intricacies of this memoir.
Nafisi seems to relate nearly every event in her life and the lives of her students as a reflection of some fictional character, which under the circumstance seems to be an unusual coping method.
This memoir is an interesting look at the political/ religious upheaval that engulfed Tehran as told through the eyes and thoughts of a woman whose life revolved around the reading and exploration of literature. While the oppression of women in this society seems to be a major focus of the memoir, the fact that having one segment of a society oppressed does in fact oppress every segment and facet of that society is briefly encountered. While,in many instances, the importance of literature seems to be overshadowed by the oppression and brutality of the ruling regime, Nafisi's focus never seems to waver, which at times feels disturbing and yet at the same time hopeful.
Rating:
Summary: Reading Lolita in Tehran : A Memoir in Books
Review: Nafisi details her experiences in Iran from 1979 to 1997, when she taught English literature in Tehran universities and hosted a private seminar on Western literature for female university students. Born and raised in Iran, the author offers readers a personal account of events in the postrevolutionary period that are often generalized by other writers. She was a witness to compulsory veiling, the "cultural revolution" that closed and purged the universities, the Iraq-Iran war (including missile attacks against Tehran), and the Ayatollah Khomeini's death. Nafisi provides readers with a view of Tehran during these tumultuous two decades and describes the ways that individuals resisted and defied the new regime's restrictive policies concerning both women's and men's behavior and dress. Readers interested in Western literature and the ways that key works could be interpreted by those living in different settings and times will find this book fascinating. Specialists on Iran, the Middle East, and Islam will also find the work unique, controversial, and informative. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Most public and academic collections and levels.
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.
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