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| The Great Gatsby | 
| Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
Publisher: Scribner
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
Buy Used: $0.99
You Save: $13.01 (93%)
New (109) Collectible (8) from $4.79
Avg. Customer Rating:  1130 reviews
Sales Rank: 595
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 180
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.5
ISBN: 0743273567
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.52
EAN: 9780743273565
ASIN: 0743273567
Publication Date: September 30, 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Visible shelf wear -- may have some notes/markings on pages
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| Customer Reviews:
Parallels to today June 3, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a small, quick read classic novel. While many consider it to be the finest of American novels, I personally didn't find it to rank quite that high. It is however a very good book, and although I somehow did not read the book until my 30's, I can understand why it is so widely required in many high school and college courses.
Mr. Fitzgerald paints a vivid picture of the "Jazz Age" of the 1920's and most of the book is centered on New York City and Long Island's North Shore. I found a lot of parallels to today throughout the book. The Great Gatsby gives a detailed development of how the never ending quest for material objects and riches can corrupt someone to their soul if a proper grounding in what is truly is important isn't present.
Mr. Fitzgerald also provides excellent character development; creating characters that can be rooted for and loathed at the same time. In the end it is shown how shallow pursuits can lead to a road of destruction and dismay.
the good (but not great) "gatsby" May 30, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
"And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grown in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer" (4)
"When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness" (21)
"The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world" (68)
"It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart." (96)
"Daisy began to sing with the music in a husky, rhythmic whisper, bringing out a meaning in each word that it had never had before and would never have again. When the melody rose, her voice broke up sweetly, following it, in a way contralto voices have, and each change tipped out a little of her warm human magic upon the air." (108)
"...--he could climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder" (110)
"'Madame expects you in the salon!' he cried, needlessly indicating the direction. In this heat every extra gesture was an affront to the common store of life" (115)
"I was thirty. Before me stretched the portentous, menacing road of a new decade. [...] Thirty--the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning briefcase of enthusiasm, thinning hair." (135)
"...and Gatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that weath imprisons and preserves, of the freshness of many clothes, and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor" (150)
"The afternoon had made them tranquil for a while, as if to give them a deep memory for the long parting the next day promised." (150)
"It was after we started with Gatsby toward the house that the gardener saw Wilson's body a little way off in the grass, and the holocaust was complete" (162)
"[Mr. Gatz] had reached an age where death no longer has the quality of ghastly surprise" (168)
"But I wanted to leave things in order and not just trust that obliging and indifferent sea to sweep my refuse away" (177)
"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...." (179)
"He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night" (180)
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such lush and gorgeous sentences filled this small book. delivered in an effortless manner. i like very much the portraits fitzgerald summoned up of each of the main characters. having said this, i don't believe this book is THE Great American Novel, as some critics would have it. i don't know if it's even great. it's a fairly good read, but to bestow such laurels on this novel is a bit of a stretch.
"'They're a rotten crowd', I shouted across the lawn. May 23, 2008
`You're worth the whole damn bunch put together.'"
One of the few books I did not resent being coerced into reading by public school curriculums. One hell of a book. Three cheers for the collarless shirt, and a fourth for a story that glorifies a truly American craft--smuggling under embargoes and prohibitions. Death to the State's drug war! Long live Gatsby!
Review by Anna May 16, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The Great Gatsby is not your typical fictional novel. In this book you will find mystery, excitement, rule-breaking, parties, and shady characters that surprise you with every turn- all of which I was not expecting when I began this book. F. Scott Fitzgerald added these elements in a 1920's setting- an era in which there were many social changes. The main theme presented in this book- you can't relive the past- is relevent even today. We all live in the here-and-now- what's in the past is in the past for a reason, and trying to alter that will cause problems for many people- as you will find in The Great Gatsby. We can all get something out of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, no matter your age!
 The Great American Novel. May 10, 2008
If you don't fancy literature after this book then you never will. An American classic. All about what happens when idealism collides with conformity.
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