Literature

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

/ Literature, Reading

★★★★★ | Literature | Print + Digital | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads 

Ah, Gatsby. It’s been a moment. I last read this book in college, and although I remember the story, I’m fairly sure I missed the point. It has been good for me to go back and reread these perennial classics that I thought I knew.

Here we have a true American tragedy, wrapped in social wit and irony, stewed in alcohol and disillusionment, where wealth, whether old or new, buys not love, but misery, where the strong moral values of the Midwest prove all too corruptible, where the very premise of the American Dream is nothing more than a cheat, a scam.

Other than maybe Gatsby, there isn’t a trustworthy or likeable character in the bunch. Ungrateful, snobbish, and vain, they look at people as novelties to play with and discard. Even Nick, our narrator, is cruel and two-faced. While her husband, Tom, is despicable, Daisy Buchanan is the real villain of this story. Her voice is full of money, Gatsby tells us. Not love, not empathy, not kindness. Money.

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Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

/ Literature, Reading

★★★★★ | Literature | Print + Digital | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads

Rereading a book you haven’t read in 40 years is an interesting experience. I remembered only the bleakness but little of the story itself. I enjoyed most of the book, though all the decades of Hemingway parodies and copycats stole some of its luster. Still, it is a timeless classic that reinvented the novel. Makes me want to go back and read all those books I read when I was young. If this one is any guide, it will be like reading them again for the first time.

If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

/ Horror, Literature, Reading

★★★☆☆ | Horror | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads

This book was nothing like I expected. Frankenstein (the scientist) is arrogant, self-absorbed, and makes incredibly bad decisions. The story itself is unbelievably far-fetched. There were times I wanted to throw my Kindle on the floor at the dumb-assedness of our unreliable protagonist.

Taken more broadly, it’s a cautionary tale about mankind’s continual push for scientific advancement, which feels more relevant today than ever.

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David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

/ Literature, Reading

★★★★★ | Literature | Digital + Audio | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads 

Stepping into a Dickens novel requires a certain faith that the vocabulary and style and flood of characters you meet will eventually make sense.  I was distrustful at first, my head spinning with each new character, some appearing for such a short visit that I complained to myself that Dickens was being indulgent.  I was wrong to be critical of the master. By the end of this story, every character, no matter how minor, was reintroduced and I understood their purpose in the story. Sure, this involved a lot of happy coincidences for our protagonist, but it brought me happiness to have these loose threads woven together.

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