The Great Gatsby in Pop Sugar's Annual Ultimate Reading Challenge

Mar 15, 2013 Teresa rated it liked it · review of another edition

The lengthiest and most expensive mistake of my life, before changing direction into Psychology, was getting a degree in English and Spanish language and literature. Gatsby was hammered and painstakingly dissected when studying examples of The Great American Novel for Literature Criticism.

I liked it very much then, when I still had one foot in my teens and another in my 20s, so my remembered impression of it was awarded a 5 stars review.

Middle-aged now, and with concentration severely impaire The lengthiest and most expensive mistake of my life, before changing direction into Psychology, was getting a degree in English and Spanish language and literature. Gatsby was hammered and painstakingly dissected when studying examples of The Great American Novel for Literature Criticism.

I liked it very much then, when I still had one foot in my teens and another in my 20s, so my remembered impression of it was awarded a 5 stars review.

Middle-aged now, and with concentration severely impaired, I’ve attempted to re-read it for a couple of years, failing miserably to engage with the narrative of banalities and moral transgressions of the rich and privileged.

Audible again has come to the rescue: I realised that, because it is only about 4 hours long, I had bought it on audio a while ago, as it perfectly fits the duration of a road trip to visit family in the north.

I have now managed to finish listening to it, and I almost recoiled at the feelings it has left me with. Very similar to my reaction to Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies, both book and TV series, I detected a frisson of schadenfreude at the emotional misery of the wealthy and idle. I could not care less about these people or this story, hence my reviewed rating down two stars.

I was a bookworm and quite precocious, and started University at 16. Separated from this pseudo-intellectual context, and the need to write a florid essay about it, separated by decades from the time I was really striving to get “all the classics” under my belt in record time, it has lost all its relevance to me.

Who knows? By revisiting books read a long time ago, I may even end up tolerating Wuthering Heights one day.

A-Z Reading Challenge 2021: G

Popsugar Reading Challenge 2021:

23. A book set somewhere you’d like to visit in 2021. It would be nice to plan another American East adventure if the pandemic allows such plans any time soon.

But I also have to count it as:

44. The book in your TBR with the ugliest cover, because even though I only managed to finish it on Audible, the paper copy I have shows the cover for the first edition, which I have always hated, with the disembodied face floating above the city. Ugh! I really hate that cover. ...more

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