The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy–they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…

This is the year of Fitzgerald for me after a lifetime that was FSF-less! I've now read both The Beautiful and Damned and The Great Gatsby and I was not enamored of either of them, but I guess I'm glad I read them. I'm thinking of making it a clean sweep and reading the rest of his stuff before year's end. Maybe. Or not.

Anyway, sooo many people I know read this book in high school and loved it with all their hearts so I figured it was time to figure out what it's all about before the movie. And unfortunately I can't report that I loved it or figured it out, though I think it's possible that if I'd read this in high school I would have liked it more and thought it was tragic or something, which would have appealed to me so much.

This won't really be a review because quite honestly I don't know how to review it. Instead, I present to you a collection of thoughts.

It takes forever for anything to happen in this book. It's a relatively small book and nothing happens at first.

The narrator is boring. I thought he was going to fall in love with Gatsby but that didn't happen.

I read this with friends and when I asked them who their favorite character was, they both said Jordan and I'd already forgotten who she was.

Tom sort of casually breaks his mistresses's nose at a party/gathering thingie and it's like no big deal. Seriously this one sentence in the book stuck out to me more than anything else and bugged me, lol. Whatever.

Tom and Daisy have a child but I don't really know why

My friend gave me a link to a podcast about the book and they talked about how the car accident was heavily foreshadowed and I legitimately just thought that was repetition.

I promise I read this entire book, but I still feel like I missed most of it somehow. I was pretty stressed out the week I read it so I'll use that as an excuse.

Do you guys like this book? If so please give me all the reasons why! I think I actually ended up enjoying The Beautiful and Damned more, but it's not really a fair comparison because I read TBAD as a sort of companion to another story which enriched my reading experience.

I do plan to see the movie, though, should be interesting!