Surely, I told myself, Think, Write, Speak would consist mainly of archival leftovers — and yet I couldn’t resist devouring its 500 pages. Like Oscar Wilde or W.H. Auden, Nabokov fearlessly professes such 'strong opinions' — the title of the previous collection of his nonfiction — that he’s always immense fun to read ... Overall, there’s no doubt that Think, Write, Speak will chiefly appeal to the Nabokov completist. Still, any sensitive reader will linger over the beautiful sentences with which Nabokov enriches even his most casual prose.

... is mostly for completists ... Nabokov disliked the Q. and A. 'I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child,' he wrote. Yet two-thirds of Think, Write, Speak is made up of interviews, more than 80 of them, most conducted after the publication of Lolita. One suspects that Nabokov, spying this talky book from the Great Beyond, must feel as if someone has dug up his bones, hanged him, and buried him again ... Nabokov is Nabokov. He dispenses gleaming shards...But the same topics keep coming around, as if on a sushi belt.

Stray letters to the editor also appear throughout -- generally making specific points or corrections; it's a shame there aren't more of these ... The interviews -- questions and responses -- do make up most of this collection, and some of the best are the succinct, staccato exchanges, right to the point ... The editors have trimmed many of these interviews, to avoid duplication of the same sets of questions-and-answers -- presumably helpful in avoiding repetition, but occasionally making for a too-trimmed-back feel ... It's nice to have this material collected here, much of it otherwise inaccessible or difficult to find ... Much in Think, Write, Speak feels familiar, Nabokov's strong but familiar opinions -- about specific authors, books, and, of course, the Soviet Union -- and not too many new details, personal or literary are revealed here, but it's still a fascinating career- and life over-view. There are some valuable new pieces here, particularly the essays on facets of Soviet literature, while the interviews provide consistently good entertainment value ... The volume is obviously of considerable interest and value to any Nabokov-fan, but there's certainly enough here to make it worthwhile also for the more casual reader.

... a new and significantly less entertaining collection of Nabokov nonfiction ... a meticulously contextualized volume just brimming with supporting information ... indeed a work of considered scholarship - Nabokov scholarship, which will be of interest mainly to Nabokov scholars and fervent completists. The book assembles dozens of often very short interviews that weren’t included in Strong Opinions, plus speeches, the occasional indifferent book review, and a smattering of almost humorously pedantic letters to various long-suffering editors ... presents many decades and many layers of pomposity ... The pre-Lolita Nabokov, gaining teaching positions and learning how much spare spending money could be picked up doing commissioned work, isn’t much less insufferable ... it’ll no doubt have Nabokov fans nodding eagerly. Those fans will look on Think, Write, Speak as the treat of the book season, and they’re fortunate to have such a conscientiously-assembled volume.

There are reviews from the Russian émigré newspapers and from The New Republic, for which he became an occasional contributor after moving to the US in 1940. With a few exceptions (for example Ivan Bunin) his subjects are too long forgotten for the reviews to retain much interest today, but Nabokov’s bee stings are a primer in the critic’s art of netting and pinning a subject in the space of a sentence ... The book we have is not like any other I’ve read. Not quite diaristic, at times resembling an untrimmed book of aphorisms, hammering on pet themes, Think, Write, Speak is a twisting and bumpy road for the reader who attempts to read it front to back. Sinuosity, the quality Nabokov prized in his own sentences, isn’t the word for this journey ... Every interview Nabokov granted was a defence, not only of himself against charges of scandal and obscenity, but also of art, the imagination, and literature itself. He devoted his life to the shiver in the spine that passes from writer to reader, and it’s there that he lives on.

... offers an eclectic mix of Nabokov’s nonfiction ... an expansive record of Nabokov’s worldview and aesthetic philosophy, but one particularly fascinating element of Think, Write, Speak is the insight it gives us into how Nabokov, staunchly opposed to the politicization of literature, navigated being a public explainer of Russian arts and letters in the midst of the Cold War.

Think, Write, Speak is a frequently fascinating assortment of Nabokov’s hitherto uncollected, untranslated and even unpublished materials ... This new volume might – so far as the interviews are concerned – be subtitled 'The second best of Vladimir Nabokov', but there is still much of interest ... Arriving at the final interview, I found myself thinking with both horror and relief that, had Nabokov not died when he did, this book could have been twice as capacious. Ashamed, and feeling more charitable, I began to wonder what Nabokov might have written had interviews not devoured so much of his time.

The more than 150 essays, interviews, and letters collected in this volume, some translated from the Russian for the first time, serve as an illuminating complement to Nabokov’s 1973 nonfiction roundup, Strong Opinions. Spanning the years 1921 to 1977 and drawn from sources as diverse as the New Republic, Sports Illustrated, and journals for Europe’s Russian émigré community, they show the author to have been strongly opinionated on matters that run the gamut from literary style, to his discoveries as an amateur lepidopterist or the cultural impact of his controversial novel Lolita ... [Nabokov's] incisive wit and intellectual honesty are evident in his responses to interviewers’ repetitive questions about the scandal caused by Lolita.

Scores of interviews reveal Nabokov’s sly wit and powerful opinions ... An informative introduction places the selections in the context of Nabokov’s life and writing career ... Boyd has condensed some of the more repetitive interviews ... A rich treat for Nabokov’s admirers.