While you may think you know the story of Lolita, if you have not read Nabokov’s literary masterpiece, you are missing out on one of the most brilliant, touching, perverse, and entertaining books of the last hundred years.
A meditation on youth, loss, trauma, and sexual manipulation, Nabokov employs wry humor and presents his characters without judgment. This subject matter could have easily drowned in the obvious cultural taboo of pedophilia, but Nabokov accesses an emotional purity that artfully bypasses such cliches. Woven into the story are little winks and nods which keep it from suffering under the weight of itself.
Nabokov wrote the screenplay for Kubrick’s 1962 film adaptation, and there is also a 1997 version with Dominique Swain, Jeremy Irons, and a memorable Melanie Griffith. In this case, the book is better than the movies. Lolita is well worth your time and deserves a space on your bookshelf. 
An Education encapsulates that perilous time between girlhood and womanhood where life changing mistakes are made or avoided. The problem with sixteen is that you think you know everything and you actually don’t know shit. Even the smartest sixteen year-olds are fucking stupid due to a lack of fully developed frontal lobe reasoning. For proof, see Sixteen and Pregnant which demonstrates this reasoning deficit episode after episode.
Carey Mulligan plays Jenny, a bright-eyed high school co-ed in 1960′s England. Jenny’s at the tender age where she still thinks existentialism is interesting. Even though she’s clever, she’s naive and falls deliriously in love with what she perceives as an older, wiser man. 
Without spoiling the story, let me just say that you should be very suspicious of the advances of a significantly older suitor. Eventually you will age and these men never age out of their Lolita complex. He will trade you in for a younger version, Trust. An Education proves that you should never let flattery cloud your judgment.