Monday's Excerpts - The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

     I’m so glad my dad has such an expansive collection of books, especially classics. It would be irritating to have to wait a few weeks for the library to deliver every book I wanted to read. Luckily, quite a few things are easily plucked from his shelves. The Great Gatsby was no exception.

     I read The Great Gatsby for the same reason I read The Catcher in the Rye last week—it’s one of Jonathan’s favorites. I enjoyed Fitzgerald more than I did Salinger, his word painting was phenomenal and reminded me of Nabokov. Although, if The Great Gatsby’s plot stood alone, it wouldn’t have been worth reading or remembering.

     There’s spoilers this week, so beware.

This Week's Book: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

    “Anyhow, he gives large parties,” said Jordan, changing the subject with an urban distance for the concrete. “And I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.” (Pages 49-50)

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    He hadn’t once ceased looking at Daisy, and I think he revalued everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew from her well-loved eyes. Sometimes, too, he stared around at his possessions in a dazed way, as though in her actual and astounding presence none of it was any longer real. Once he nearly toppled down a flight of stairs. (Page 92)

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    “I can’t describe to you how surprised I was to find out I loved her, old sport. I even hoped for a while that she’d throw me over, but she didn’t, because she was in love with me too. She thought I knew a lot because I knew different things from her . . . Well, there I was, ‘way off my ambitions, getting deeper in love every minute, and all of a sudden I didn’t care. What was the use of doing great things if I could have a better time telling her what I was going to do?” (Page 150)

Books read this past week...
★★★★☆ Anybody Can Write: A Playful Approach by Roberta Jean Bryant
★★★★★ The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. & E.B. White
★★★☆☆ The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
★★★★☆ Climbing Mount Improbable by Richard Dawkins

(All title links link back to my webpages of them on Goodreads.com, a great library/reviewing/rating website for readers. Check it out, and add me as a friend if you decide to join!)