I am on a quest to read.

Dates: January 7

Books read: 2

Books remaining: 98

Blog Post:

Okay so if you look at my book list, The Great Gatsby is actually #3 on the list, not #2. Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust. However, I have the book on hold from my local library, and there’s only ONE copy for the whole area’s metropolitan library. I really did want to read the books in the randomized order of my list, but if I’m going to read them all within 365 days, I can’t waste days waiting for my holds to be ready. SO– I’ve moved onto #3. I’m going to do my best to read them in order, but you have to be flexible on quests.

Moving on to The Great Gatsby–I was looking forward to reading this one for many reasons: (1) it’s much shorter than the first two books, readable within one day; (2) I’ve read it previously when I was in high school, and I was looking forward to re-reading it with a new, older (but not like, a lot older, okay?) perspective; and (3) everyone has strong opinions about The Great Gatsby–it’s a popular book. 

I remember reading The Great Gatsby in high school and liking it, but I didn’t really remember why I liked it. And having now reread it, I have no idea why I liked it back then. Maybe I was in love with the idea of being rich (who isn’t?), maybe I found Gatsby’s love for Daisy incredibly romantic. Whatever the reason, the feeling did not last. First, before I go any further, I do NOT remember reading this incredibly gay scene, when Nick is in the city getting drunk with Tom and his mistress, and he leaves the apartment with the artist, Mr. McKee: 

"Come to lunch someday," [Mr. McKee] suggested, as we groaned down in the elevator.

"Where?"

"Anywhere."

"Keep your hands off the lever," snapped the elevator boy.

"I beg your pardon," said Mr. McKee with dignity, "I didn't know I was touching it."

"All right," I agreed, "I'll be glad to"Come to lunch someday," [Mr. McKee] suggested, as we groaned down in the elevator.

"Where?"

"Anywhere."

"Keep your hands off the lever," snapped the elevator boy.

"I beg your pardon," said Mr. McKee with dignity, "I didn't know I was touching it."

"All right," I agreed, "I'll be glad to."

" . . . I was standing beside his bed and he was sitting up between the sheets, clad in his underwear, with a great portfolio in his hands.”

Like, clearly this isn’t overtly a hook up between Mr. McKee and Nick, but I’m 100% convinced that it happened and I don’t know how I missed it the first time I read the book. That said, I went to a very conservative high school so maybe that’s to be expected. Anyway. 

Moving on: each and every single character in this book is sooooooo annoying. Nick is a rich, pretentious idiot who thinks he’s better than everyone. Actually, he might be better than everyone we meet in the book, but unfortunately for him, that’s not saying much. Tom is a racist, sexist asshole who peaked in college (literally: “one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterwards savors of anticlimax.”). Jordan, my favorite character in the book, is a liar committed to being a bystander. Daisy was born with a silver spoon in her mouth and is doing her best to be miserable about it. And finally, Gatsby is a poor man who got rich quick doing something unsavory–it’s never explicitly said what–who is so obsessed with a woman that he can’t handle the fact that that woman loves her husband, even a little.

Jordan is my favorite character in the book, even though Nick tells us she’s a liar and implies that she cheated at one of her golf championships, because at one point Tom says she’s too wild and her family shouldn’t “let her run around like that.” What can I say, I love a woman who goes against the grain. 

The book is really well written and is filled with the kind of imagery that is perfect for exploring in a high school/college literature class, so I understand why it is as popular as it is. But the “love story” between Daisy and Gatsby stinks of a man obsessed with the idea of being rich and earning the love of a woman far above his station in life, without needing to know anything about the woman herself, and a woman who’s bored and wants to get back at her husband for cheating on her. This obsession fails him in the end, as it’s too much for Daisy: “‘Oh, you want too much!’” she cried to Gatsby. “‘I love you now–isn’t that enough? I can’t help what’s past.’” She began to sob helplessly. “‘I did love him once–but I loved you too.’” Poor little rich girl with two rich men fighting over her. It’s a very boring love story–the only exciting thing about it is Gatsby’s murder. 

Nick and Jordan’s relationship is 1000 times more interesting to me, even if it is less obsessive and romantic. Nick initially admires her self-sufficiency (and of course, she’s beautiful). He goes to many parties with her, and decides that she avoids clever men so that she can get away with her lying. Jordan says she herself is careless (in the context of driving), and hates careless people, and that’s why she likes Nick. Nick can never decide if he’s in love with Jordan, he considers himself careful, and “one of the few honest people [he has] ever known.”  In the end, after Nick breaks off their relationship, Jordan says “‘You said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver? Well, I met another bad driver, didn’t I? I mean it was careless of me to make such a wrong guess. I thought you were a rather honest, straightforward person. I thought it was your secret pride.’” Something about how Jordan is hurt by Nick is closer to real emotion than anything else felt by anyone in this book.

I really feel like Jordan could have been redeemed, if Fitzgerald gave her a chance. Sure, she’s a liar willing to stand off to the side while Tom and Daisy hurt each other, other people, and themselves, but before Nick “throws her over,” Jordan takes steps to distance herself from Tom and Daisy. However, we’ll never know if that was her decision, or if that was a result of Tom and Daisy running away from Myrtle’s murder. Personally, I kinda hope Jordan is still out there lying to the sexist men of the 1920’s.

It is actually really impressive that Fitzgerald, after introducing us to the worst people we’ve ever met, is able to make us (okay, maybe just me? I’m not sure who “we” are) feel bad for Gatsby after his death. Nick does his best to get any of the hundreds of people who would come out to Gatsby’s parties to go to his funeral, and fails. Instead, Gatsby is buried with only his dad (who apparently beat him), Nick (who met him that summer, like three months ago!!) and a guy called “Owl Eyes” (who is a drunk guy that was amazed that Gatsby’s library has real, actual books in his library, rather than fake cardboard covers) as attendants to his funeral. Owl Eyes says it best:

“‘I couldn’t get to the house,’ he remarked.

‘Neither could anybody else.’

‘Go on!’ He started. ‘Why, my God! they used to go there by the hundreds.” 

He took off his glasses and wiped them again, outside and in.

‘The poor son-of-a-bitch,’ he said.”

In sum, I enjoyed rereading this book–I really love to hate things sometimes, and this book includes so many characters and situations to hate.

My favorite lines/quotes of the book:

“Almost any exhibition of complete self-sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from me.” Nick, when he meets Jordan for the first time.

“‘In two weeks it’ll be the longest day in the year.’ She looked at us all radiantly. ‘Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it.’” Daisy. This line is something that has stuck with me since I read the book the very first time–because, yes, I do normally miss the longest day of the year, even after all winter of wishing for more daylight hours. I’ve always wanted to be married, or do something special on the Solstice, so that I always have something to celebrate that day and never miss it. 

“‘What’ll we do with ourselves this afternoon?’ cried Daisy. ‘And the day after that, and the next thirty years?’ ‘Don’t be morbid,’ Jordan said. ‘Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.’” This is just a lovely line.

Dates: January 1-January 6

Books read: 1

Books remaining: 99

Blog Post:

So the first book on my list was The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien, which is an intimidating book to begin my quest with (especially on January 1st with a new years eve hangover). My copy (borrowed from my brother - thanks Adam!) clocked in at 1,196 pages, and everything I’ve ever heard about Tolkien is that he is a dry writer who spends too much time describing trees. I tried to read The Hobbit when I was in middle school, and the first description of a tree kept me from reading any further. So to say I was nervous that this was going to be painful is an understatement.

However, I was very pleasantly surprised with this book. Don’t get me wrong, Tolkein is a dry writer, and his writing is very soothing and lyrical, perfect for lulling a hungover reader to sleep three times while starting the book on January 1st (true story). I’ve heard that Tolkein started this novel as a bedtime story for his kids (no idea if that’s a true story), and I have to say if that is true, it shows. 

My brother’s copy of the Lord of the Rings is split up into three parts, matching the movies: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King. Speaking of the movies, I have seen all of them a few times, but I never paid too much attention to the nuances of the storyline, so while I was far from an expert in the book, I did have a general idea of where the story was going. 

The first part was the part that lulled me to sleep the most. It is very much the exposition of the story, we get introduced to all of our characters and their backgrounds, we get a brief (well, in a manner of speaking–nothing Tolkein does is brief) history of the Hobbit, and our Fellowship starts on their journey. I really enjoyed the way that when members of the Fellowship are having a bad time in every new location–fighting trees, running from orcs, or Black Riders, you name it–each time they leave that location, the characters are hit with fear of the next step. For example when the hobbits are leaving the Old Forest at the beginning of their journey, Tolkien writes: “Ever since they had entered the Forest they had thought chiefly of getting back to the Road; only now when it lay beneath their feet did they remember the danger which pursued them, and was more than likely laying in wait for them upon the Road itself.” I love that Tolkein included this hesitation of going forward, that each character continually looks back and thinks “why didn’t I realize how nice we had it then?” It’s a very human emotion to be constantly looking forward to the ending, which we think will be better, or to look back and realize we didn’t appreciate our situation as it was then.

The first part does not have as many funny moments as the others, nor as many dangerous or deep moments. However one of my favorite parts in Part One is the hobbits attempting to keep a low profile in an inn, and Frodo, in an attempt to stop Pippin and Sam from saying to much or bringing too much attention to their group, leaps onto a table, is peer-pressured into singing a song, and accidentally puts on the Ring that makes him disappear. The crowd goes wild, and the people in the inn looking for the Ring are suspicious. As I wrote on the sticky note I left in the book–top-tier comedy, that’s hilarious.

Part Two is my favorite part of the book by far. Here is where Tolkein sets everyone up for the final fight with the Enemy, which is Part Three. Part Two begins with (spoiler alert!) Boromir’s death. This is another example of Tolkein being an extremely dry writer–Boromir’s death is sad, and he has a beautiful line about trying to take the Ring from Frodo (see my favorite lines below), but honestly his death is underwhelming. I’m not normally one for comparing books and movies, because I always think the books are much better, but I think the movies do a much better job of handling Boromir’s death (go watch it on Youtube). 

My absolute favorite part of the book is Merry and Pippin hanging out with the Ents–I would read a whole book about that. Something about tiny little hobbits hanging out with giant trees is just fun to read, and the Fangorn forest is the most peaceful setting of the whole novel; I would like to live there. 

Part Two also expands on Gimli and Legolas’s friendship–a rare friendship between Dwarves and Elves. Their friendship is hilarious; they’re constantly saying “You’re wrong, you’re nuts, but you’re my friend so I love you.” For example, while they’re in Helms Deep preparing for battle, Gimli says he likes it and would like to spend more time there and explore the caves underground. Legolas responds “I do not like this place, and I shall like it no more by the light of day. But you comfort me Gimli,” and is also basically an inverse of the conversation they have in Fangorn forest, where Legolas loves the trees, and Gimli thinks Legolas is crazy. Their friendship is so fun.

I could write another blog post longer than this one about Sam and Frodo. Their whole relationship is so heartwarming–Frodo protects Sam as his master (his boss) from people who think Sam should shut up and go home. And Sam literally carries Frodo up the mountain to destroy the Ring, which was the most touching, heartrending part of Part Three. “‘I’ll get there, if I leave everything but my bones behind,’ said Sam. ‘And I’ll carry Mr. Frodo up myself, if it breaks my back and heart.’” I mean, you should read this novel just for Sam alone.

Part Three wraps up our story, which is a boring way to describe the battles and fights the characters go through, but if you want to read about the fights and the danger, read the book yourself! Each character goes through life changing battles, and comes out of the end very changed, but there are too many things to discuss in a single blog post. I was surprised that after the final battle, after the Ring is destroyed, the story carries on back to the Shire, where the hobbits have to fight to reclaim their land from ruffians. I’d never heard about that–it’s not in the movies. But I loved it. It was awesome to see the four hobbits use the skills they learned and the ways they’ve changed to reclaim their home. I’m a sucker for a story where our main characters are powerful and kick ass.  

The novel ends with Frodo leaving to cross the Sea with the Elves and Bilbo, to find some peace after his hard journey and being injured from bearing the Ring. Once again, a heartbreaking moment between Sam and Frodo–I actually teared up, which made my boyfriend laugh at me. The part that made me tear up:

“‘Where are you going, Master?’ cried Sam, as though at last he understood what was happening. 

‘To the Havens, Sam,’ said Frodo. 

‘And I can’t come.’ 

‘No, Sam. Not yet anyway…Do not be too sad, Sam. You cannot always be torn in two. You will have to be one and whole, for many years. You have so much to enjoy and to be, and to do.’

‘But,’ said Sam, and tears started in his eyes, ‘I thought you were going to enjoy the Shire, too, for years and years, after all you have done.’”

“‘And I can’t come.’” I mean, have you ever read a more heartbreaking line? Can you blame me for tearing up?

Finally, I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t discuss the women (or the lack of them) in this novel. Galadriel is a strong, powerful elf lady, who gives each of the Fellowship something that eventually saves their life–we love to see that. And Éowyn starts as a kick ass shieldmaiden who disguises herself as a man to go to war to fight, and kills the King of the Black Riders, which kicks ass. Unfortunately, we later find out she did this because she’s hoping to die because she’s in love with Aragorn, who doesn’t love her back. She only ends up happy in the end because she falls in love with Faramir. Gag. Couldn’t she have just kicked ass, and then moved on to help her brother run Rohan? Oh well, a novel can’t have everything I suppose. But yeah, I hated this, which is why I barely talk about her here. Sorry Éowyn! Arwen exists to marry Aragorn, I guess? Good for her. Ioreth is a woman who works in the Halls of Healing and remembers an old rhyme that reminds Gandalf that the King will have healing hands, which allows Aragorn to heal Faramir, Éowyn, and Merry (and probably a bunch of other people). Arguably more helpful than Arwen, maybe Aragorn should have married her. Ioreth is later found gossiping with some other, unnamed woman about Aragorn. Sam marries Rosie Cotton, and has a daughter named Elenar. And this summarizes every named woman in the book, for the most part.

All in all, I really enjoyed this book. Yes, it was dry, and yes, there were barely any women in it, but it is a timeless story of friendship, and clearly is on the 100 books to read before you die lists for a reason. I’ll probably go back and reread this book someday, sometime when I can read it more slowly and really take in everything. 

My favorite lines/quotes of the book:

“‘Put it away! I am sorry: sorry you have come in for this burden: sorry about everything. Don’t adventures ever have an end? I suppose not. Someone else always has to carry on the story.” Bilbo to Frodo.

“‘I tried to take the Ring from Frodo’, he said. ‘I am sorry. I have paid.’” Boromir to Aragorn, as he dies. 

“‘The matter of the Lady Galadriel lies still between us. I have yet to teach you gentle speech.’” Gimli to Éomer (to summarize: I know we’re busy with other stuff right now, but you’re still gonna catch these hands for talking shit about my girl Galadriel).

“‘He has a mind of metal and wheels; and he does not care for growing things, except as far as they serve him for the moment.’” Treebeard about Saruman, right before he gets wrecked by some growing things. The imagery of a “mind of metal and wheels” goes hard, I love that.

“‘Of course, it is likely enough, my friends,’ he said slowly, ‘likely enough that we are going to our doom: the last march of the Ents. But if we stayed home and did nothing, doom would find us anyway, sooner or later.’” Treebeard, before going to Isengard to defeat Saruman. This line could be used to summarize each character’s journey–every single one of them is thinking they will not accomplish what they are attempting to do, but someone has to try so they try. We could all use a little of that attitude, at least I know I could. Maybe that will be the quote for my quest too. 

The Lord Of The Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien

In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford

Under The Net by Iris Murdoch

American Pastoral by Philip Roth

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

Animal Farm by George Orwell

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Atonement by Ian McEwan

Crime And Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The Grapes Of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

A Passage to India by EM Forster

Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

1984 by George Orwell

White Noise by Don DeLillo

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

The Stranger by Albert Camus

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Oscar And Lucinda by Peter Carey

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

The Call of the Wild by Jack London

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John Le Carré

Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

Ulysses by James Joyce

Scoop by Evelyn Waugh

Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Middlemarch by George Eliot

Are You There, God? It’s me, Margaret by Judy Blume

Clarissa by Samuel Richardson

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Herzog by Saul Bellow

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes

A Bend in the River by V. S. Naipaul

A Dance to The Music of Time by Anthony Powell

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Go Tell It On The Mountain by James Baldwin

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

I, Claudius by Robert Graves

Nostromo by Joseph Conrad

The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger

Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White

Tom Jones by Henry Fielding

His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman

Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Little Women by Louisa M Alcott

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth

Watchmen by Alan Moore

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

The Trial by Franz Kafka

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Money by Martin Amis

This might be a midlife (how does anyone know when their life is in the middle) crisis, but in an effort to find some meaning - or maybe focus is the better word - to my life post-grad school, I am going on a quest. This quest is heretically inspired by Julie & Julia (2009); I use heretically intentionally here because I love that movie in a way that's almost worship. Anyway, my quest. I am embarking on a journey to read "the 100 books you should read before you die." And I'm gonna blog about it. There are a BUNCH of these lists, so I found one I liked after some light googling, and I'm ready to get started. I have no idea how long this quest will take me, or even when I'll start (maybe this weekend, I have plans to get a library card). But what I do know?