Don't be terrified of Pale Fire

I was excited to read Pale Fire after reading what I consider to be one of the finest novels ever written, Lolita. The protagonist is a monster, but the writing is so eloquent - and not even in the author's original tongue! Pale Fire was simply boring to me. I am not extremely literary, so a lot of it probably went over my head, but I was rather disappointed it didn't shine like his 1955 masterpiece.

Recently read “Pale Fire” for the first time. It’s insanely good. Another review I read made the comment “Nabokov spoils you for other books.” It’s funny, with beautiful sentences, engaging, and the overall format is a welcome break from the normal narrative form.

Pale Fire has been my favorite book for a long, long time, ever since I read it as part of a course in university. After all these years I haven't read a better, more intricately-constructed book.

It was suggested to me to read the intro first, then skip the poem and read the endnotes start to finish, then to go back and read the poem. The index is part of the fiction and must also be read.

I think the keys to really enjoying Pale Fire are 1) to realize that while the subject matter is ostensibly serious, Kinbote is really a comic figure, and you're meant to be laughing a lot of the time; and 2) the great puzzles to unravel are who is John Shade, who is Charles Kinbote, are any of them even real, and who wrote the poem? The book is so beautifully written that it can be argued that none of those questions have definitive answers - and thinking about them, and how Nabokov threads clues and possibilities throughout the novel, without any of them seeming to be contradictory, is the pleasure.

Pale fire is a great book, beautifully written and not particularly hard to read. Strongly recommend it.

If you are going to read Pale Fire, get it on paper. I tried to read it on my Kindle and the UI is not up to task of lots of flipping back and forth between the poem and the prose sections.