The Great Gatsby

1860onwards challenge - Book 3 - The Great Gatsby (1925)

Slow and somewhat tepid start. Personally not super interested in the period or the setting. Sometimes hard to follow, the writing being quite wishy-washy in places. Last third more interesting, emotional, and enjoyable. However it wasn't worth trudging through the first two thirds.

Characters ***

Atmosphere **

Plot *

Emotion ***

Style **

2.2

Dang. I mean, of course it's a five star book, right? But I guess I wasn't expecting it to be great. I was expecting to be great, i mean, but not like, super relevant to me in 2019 great. I'd never read it in high school, and never caught the film adaption, so I was going into this mainly blind. I pictured Leo as Gatsby of course, and that was great. but other than that: blind.

I really just like any story that tries to show how the american dream is beyond dumb, and this seems like a quintessential telling of that.

I really like fancy prose when it paint a nice picture and isn't over done, and that's done super well here.

i really like when people say “old sport”.

I really like when the first person narrator isn't really the main person in the book.

It hit lots of check marks, I guess. On top of just being a great story.