Rating: 
Summary: You're the top
Review: This is one of the ultimate in reading experiences. It's not a long book, but Fitzgerald manages to pack in just about every literary trick in this novella. And I don't mean that in a cheap way, for he very deftly creates a masterpiece of a story that in any other writer's hands would be "pulp." But a big thanks should probably go to Max Perkins, the editor, who helped shape this and so many other books. My reading list of must haves? The Great Gatsby
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Bark of the Dogwood
Catch 22
Of Mice and Men
Slaughter House Five
Rating: 
Summary: The Great Gatsby
Review: The Great Gatsby is about a man named Nick Carraway who moves to New York. He ends up renting a small cottage next to a mansion, which is occupied by the man who gives his name to the book, Jay Gatsby. This story takes place during what was known as the "roaring twenties" when everyone seemed to get rich quick. People who weren't there to experience it first hand seem to see it as a time when everyone got rich, went to speakeasies and consumed alcohol illegally. F. Scott Fitzgerald seems to think that the twenties were an era of possibility, aspiration and achievement. Gatsby is a deep, mysterious character that has secretly loved Nick's second cousin, Daisy Buchanan, since they used to date five years before the story takes place. In the present, Daisy is married to Tom Buchanan, and they have a young daughter. Tom has a mistress, who is also married, and Gatsby takes the opportunity to win back Daisy's heart.
Like Gatsby, I've made the mistake of thinking I wasn't good enough for someone and that they wouldn't accept me just the way I was. Jay Gatsby took it to a higher level than I when he lied about his upbringing and basically "wrote his own story." It is heartbreaking to think that someone won't accept you for who you really are. It hurts when people see your flaws and imperfections as what makes them better than you instead of viewing those flaws as what makes you human. This book, narrated by Nick, who said, "I am one of the few honest people I have ever known," brought me to the realization that people should not be ashamed of their past and the details of their less than perfect lives and instead learn to love them because it is what makes us who we are.
The Great Gatsby accentuates the idea that ambition is a strong virtue. It reminds us that when you strive to become the best and you want it bad enough, you'll get it. Our lives should be about turning ambition into success instead of material things and status. We need to achieve happiness in our own lives before we try and be happy with someone else. This book is a good choice for a romantic and someone who needs motivation, like I did, to be proud of their flaws and their uniqueness.
I would recommend this book to other people with hope that they get a message from it. A visual mind will see the story as a result of the description used. I would also recommend this book to someone who needs a reminder that success is achieved by ambition and hard work, and that all people, as perfect as they may seem, have details in their lives that they find faulty.
Rating: 
Summary: Read at your own Risk
Review: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
For my report I really didn't know what book to read, I asked around and one answer I got was to read the Great Gatsby. The person I asked had said they had never read the book but it was a really good movie. Since I have heard of this book before because it was a classic I decided to read it and I have to say I was not at all impressed. I decided that maybe the movie would improve on things, but I soon realized that this also was not all it was cracked up to be.
I thought that the book's basic plot was really good and interesting, but the problem with the book was that it didn't always follow the basic plot. This book was about a past love between Jay Gatsby and Daisy Duchanan trying to rekindle itself many years later, but there is only one problem, Daisy is already married to a man who is cheating on her with a girl from New York. Yes this sounds very intriguing, and it is, but this was only the story for a little more that half the book. The other half was the cousin of Daisy, Nick Carraway (teller of the story) telling about a party he went to, or what his backyard looked like, or the weather that day. What I am saying is that the tangents Nick went off on took away from the attention of what was really going on in the story.
The fact that it was told by Nick was a weird point of view to lay the story out at. It is difficult to tell a love story from the point of view from neither of the lovers. You can never really tell what they're thinking, which either adds to the suspense of the story or, takes away a lot of detail.
The book also left so many unanswered questions, one in particular being: where did Gatsby get all his money? He said that it was inherited from a man he was with at sea who died, but later tells us that most of it was wasted in the panic of the war. All we can infer is that he was gaining all this money through something illegal; drugs maybe, but never really know exactly what he was doing. This is not to say this is a bad book completely, just a very slow paced book in which most action takes place the last 70 pages about. This book is more for people who are into quiet romance novels and are very patient in their reading, in other words, for people who aren't me. Even though it seems like I spent the last paragraph trashing the book I would like to make it clear that I didn't hate it, I just didn't really like it either. It did have its moments though, just not as many as I would have liked.
The movie didn't improve on things. It mirrored the book exactly, scene by scene. I can honestly say I don't think they had a sentence out of place. It is like, if you saw the movie, you practically read the book. Not like in other movies such as "I Know What You Did Last Summer" where once you've seen it, you still don't know what the books about. This really surprised me because for such a short book (189 pages) it was a long movie (2 hours and so). This was mainly because of how much they stuck to the book, which I think wasn't the smartest thing to do. I think some of the scenes they included where a little stretched out rather than just getting to the point. Like the scene where Daisy and Gatsby meet again for the first time in many years. They just sat there for a while, then walked around a bit and talked in a very drone voice.
This brings me to another case about the movie, the acting. The parts of Daisy and Jordan (a good friend of Daisy and Nick) were very either over dramatized or under dramatized. Daisy is supposed to be calm, with a soothing voice. Instead they made her constantly shaking and her voice always in a quiver. The part of Jordan, who was supposed to be jaunty and full of life, walked slowly and spoke with a monotone voice. The movie did however clear up a few parts in the book that were confusing to me. When I read a certain part I didn't really understand what had just happened but the movie is able to show you rather than just describing it.
In conclusion for those of you who enjoy faster paced books, this isn't for you. I would recommend this to romance readers who are very patient with their reading. This book is obviously not for everybody but I have asked more people and got good responses about this book so all I can say now is read at your own risk.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant
Review: Jay Gatsby was a dreamer. He had dreams of regaining his old love that he had before he'd gone off to the war. His sole purpose in life was to get back the only woman that he had ever loved, Daisy. No matter the cost, no matter the obstacles, he would win her. This is a brilliant piece of writing. _The Great Gatsby_ has been on so many "...all times" lists, that you would think it couldn't be that good, but it is. I can't believe that F. Scott Fitzgerald was able to pull this off in such a small book (it's only about 200 pages). The character development is prodigious. Likewise, Fitzgerald's prose is as good as any American author of any generation. I felt as much for Gatsby as I have for any other character. He had always had high aspirations, but his dreams were taken away from him by the fact the he had to fight a war, and he could never be the same.
Rating:
Summary: An amazing novel
Review: This is the first novel I have read by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and I really enjoyed it, although the story was sad. I liked how he wrote the story from the observations of a neighbor. I like the way he wrote the novel. I could picture some of the events and conversations taking place. This novel painted a picture that seemed more real to me than many other novels I have read. The plot was also good. What happened? Nick Carraway was the neighbor to Jay Gatsby. Gatsby owns a large house and throws extravegant parties. His ambition is to have his former love, who is now married, attend one of his parties, and so renew their former relationship. The women Gatsby loved has an unfaithful husband and some of the novel deals with his mistress. There are also many twists in the novel, that kept me interested and allowed me to finish the book in one night. I encourage you to read this book. It is not long and is very well written.
Rating:
Summary: Heroes and Hopefuls
Review: F. Scott Fitzgerald's later novels symbolize decadence, expatriate hedonism, and excess. His first novel, This Side of Paradise, tells a story (rather biographical) of a hopeful young man in college, on the verge of transcendence and moral epiphany. One might conclude that something happened along the way, that, how could an author, so interested in classical morality, come to end writing about rich drunks living in Europe. The Great Gatsby fills in such disparity, as if Fitzgerald himself learned the lesson that all readers learn, in writing this gloriously sad and righteous book. Perhaps it was impossible to take any hero seriously, after creating Jay Gatsby. Jay Gatsby loves without judgment, without conquest or need. The sad irony is that the object of such noble sentiment is a shallow yet benign Daisy, a lethargic, bored, and wealthy philistine. Gatsby is not a wise hero, otherwise this novel would be pedantic and obvious. Gatsby shares the shallowness of modern society, and its belief system of material possession. Gatsby is, simply put, 'unaffected', pure, a blind unabashed dreamer. Jay and his friends, all rather crass and shallow except for our narrator and moral moderator, Nick Calloway, go back and forth between cocktail parties, driving under T.J Eckleberg's Eyes, an abandoned billboard optometry advertisement. Themes of T.S. Eliot's hauntingly prophetic Wasteland are echoed. When a drunken night of obliviousness ends in the death of Tom Buchanan's (a fierce egoist and staunch 'realist') mistress, the moral fiber of all those involved break down, and finger's begin to twitch and point. It is no surprise that Gatsby dies in this tragic yet hopeful novel. The arbitrariness of his death, the absurd lineage of events that precede the incident, seem obsolete and invariable in a way, almost as if his death was fitting, imminent, somehow purposeful. Readers remember the grotesquely graphic car accident, the symbolic green light across the bay, and the last scene in Gatsby's swimming pool, where ingrown waves beat 'ceaselessly against the past'. Let me assert another sublime moment: Jay stands, perched at the top of his marble staircase, wearing a colored suit. Nick notices a pink reflection below Jay, reflected off the immaculate surface Gatsby built, and now stands on. Perhaps the color leaking out of Gatsby was an arbitrary choice of wardrobe. Perhaps it was fate, that sooner or later, the color of blood, as if diluted in water, would surround and embrace our floating hero.
Rating:
Summary: The G.O.A.T.
Review: Aka, The Greatest Of All-Time. Fitzgerald scripts a wonderful story of the 1920's. He gives us a look into the lives of the wealthy in the most exciting decade in American History. No other book has the plot, characters and excitement that The Great Gatsby does. The best book of all time. It doesn't get much better than this.
Rating: 
Summary: but why is it loved so...
Review: There is no need to establish that this novel is considered to be one of the finest pieces of American literature of the twentieth century, but why does this work deserve such praise, it's storyline is common, it's prose bore most, it's seems more related to a soap opera magazine than to a novel, but it is loved so dear to many, ... WHY? I recommend that this book is read just so people can say to themselves "why"
Rating:
Summary: A master work of literature
Review: Fitzgerald's the Great Gatsby falls into that rarefied category of books -- the classic teens are forced to read in school, when few are mature enough to understand the depth of its genius. Other works in this same category include Invisible Man, anything by Dostoyevsky, anything by Tolstoy... well you get the idea. Gatsby, with its tight almost terse language, complex relationships, and subtle imagery places it among the great works of American literature. Its subject, wanting and loss, are feelings with which Fitzgerald was intimately familiar. Tragically, many people were turned off to this work as teens when they could not yet understand its multi layered emotional landscape. Hopefully, some of them return to the book as adults so that they can experience a real reading pleasure. Fitzgerald died young, but he left the world a master work.
Rating:
Summary: Love and betrayal
Review: Can you imagine a man rummaging through newspapers for years in search of a single name? Can you imagine a millionaire who would give up everything he owns just to be with the girl he loves for another second? Joe Gatsby is such a man. After years of fruitless searching he has finally found the girl again he loves more than life itself; and he is determined to win her back, no matter what the price might be. In my opinion Fitzgerald does do a great job in portraying New York's high society of the 1920's. As the plot carefully unfolds the reader gets to know more and more about the protagonist's past and can consequently form his own opinion not just about Joe Gatsby, but about a whole class of society. I would recommend this book to adults of every age. Fitzgerald uses a variety of different symbols and a rather elevated style which is not always easy to understand upon the first reading. However, I think that one should take the time and let oneself be enchanted by a storey of love and betrayal that will be unlike everything one has read before.
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