The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Graphic Novel – Aya Morton and Fred Fordham (2020)

Being a big fan of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, I was happy to come across this title in the graphic novel section at the library. (I’m really glad we have this GN section. A librarian friend of mine advocated for it and curated it right when it first started and since then, it’s grown enormously.) Anyway, this Gatsby graphic novel was hanging out there and I grabbed it and then read it right through there sitting in the library. (I just couldn’t resist!)

And I loved it. It’s more of a (necessarily) condensed version of the plot but there’s enough there for it to work smoothly and without feeling like you’ve been cheated (as the reader). Plus – the artwork by Morton is superb. It uses paler washed-out colors – like the tail end of summer – and this works perfectly as the characters in The Great Gatsby do feel and act washed out a bit after their high-living lifestyles. 

And, even better, I’m all jazzed up for a reread of the novel now (despite having read it quite a times already – see reviews here and here) plus having studied it in grad school rather a lot. (I thought that I had a copy of this on the home TBR but it seems not. No probs. I’ll just pick it up at the library next time I’m there.)

Luckily, it’s a complex novel with plenty to talk about (along with being a really good read at the same time). If you haven’t partook of it yet, there’s a good read waiting and ready. 

So, this scratched several itches all at the same time: I was looking for a classic to read (check), I was looking for a graphic novel to read (check) and most importantly of all – I was looking for a great reading experience (check). All good.

Hmm. Maybe it’s time to bump the biography of Fitzgerald on the old TBR pile…  

Library Loot: July 05 2021

Just happened to find myself at the library the other day – a complete accident, I tell you! /jk/ – and these titles happened to make it home with me:

(Top to bottom in photo):

• The Old Curiosity Shop – Charles Dickens (F)
• Seeking Pleasure in the Old Wild West – David Dary (NF/history)
• Women of the Four Winds: The Adventures of Four of America’s First Women Explorers – Elizabeth Fagg Olds (NF/history) (not in pic)
• The Great Gatsby – graphic novel (love this read) – not pictured
• DK Eyewitness Medieval Life
• Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History – S.C. Gwynne (NF/history)

(Can you tell I was roaming the history stacks? It was glorious.)

So what am I reading right now?

Well, these are in line but at this very moment in time, I’m reading an adventure/travel writing book called Side Country: Tales of Death and Life in the Back Roads of Sports by John Branch and then a quick look at a title from the TBR: The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom by Salvomir Rawicz (1956), a NF about Rawicz who was a young Polish cavalry officer who was arrested by the Russians and, after brutal interrogation and a farce of a trial, he was sentenced to 25 years’ hard labor in the Gulags. In the depth of winter in Siberia, he escaped and crossed the trans-Siberian railway and headed south to freedom. (Supposed to be an amazing read so I’m looking forward to this.)

And my regular summer project of a reread of the AP Style Manual….

Plus – you know: all these library books. 🙂

The (Almost) Halfway Post.

Almost halfway through the year and like other book bloggers, I think it’s fun to see how the reading is going and whether there are any patterns or trends emerging. 

To that end, here is what I’ve read so far this in terms of numbers:

• 54 books in total for a total of 16,142 pages:

• 33 fiction  – Includes short story collections and a play. (Very surprised to see this. I would have sworn that it was more NF but it’s not to be.) 
• 21 non-fiction

Other interesting (perhaps only to me!) stats include:

• 25 books (46%) taken from my TBR – I’d like to up this stat a bit more this year…
• Average number of books read per month: 10.5 books
• Average page count per month: 285 pp.
• Total average page count per month: 2,690 pp. 

How do the demographics look?

• 10 from POC/BIPOC authors (19%) – I’d like to up this stat a bit more this year…
• 23 male authors
• 27 female authors
• 5 mixed gender content

The books themselves:

Oldest book: (Far From the Madding Crowd / Hardy – 1875) 

Newest books: Two from 2020 (Battle of Brothers / Robert Lacey (NF) and Sharks in the Time of Saviors / Kawai Strong Washburn (F).)

Best book so far: 

Hmm. If I absolutely have to commit for both F and NF, I would argue for the following:

• Fiction: Rebecca / du Maurier (or the Hardy)
• Nonfiction: The Best American Travel Writing 2019  / Alexandra Fuller (ed.) 

Autobiographies and biographies have been popular topics, but there are no real leaders, TBH: Other topics have included nature writing, travel, history and the social sciences…. 

.It’s been a good year so far. I hope that you’re having a similar year. Onward and upward!

Incoming.

A few new titles have washed up at Chez JOMP, so thought I’d let you see what they were. (Top to bottom):

• Home Cooking – Laurie Colwin (culinary-related essays, I think). (NF/essays).

• Fraternity: An Inside Look at a Year for College Boys Becoming Men – Alexandra Robbins (NF). I’ve read her earlier work about sororities and thought that to be interesting so this title made the cut. (NF/socio?)

• The Body – Bill Bryson (NF/sci).

• Untold Stories – Alan Bennett (NF/essays I think).

• The Truth About Style – Stacey London (NF/fashion). Complete impulse buy the other day.

• Solutions and Other Problems – Alli Brosh. (Also, unpictured but also bought: Hyperbole and a Half by Brosh.) NF/auto/funny as hell).

• Taste of Home Winning Recipes – Barnes and Noble cheapie bargain book to get ideas for supper. 🙂 (NF/food). I’ve tried a few recipes out of here – good so far.

And, of course. I’m not actually reading any of these right now! 🙂

Library Loot: June 14 2021

Top to bottom, left to right:

• Trees – DK Eyewitness Books (NF/nature)
• An Empire of Ice: Scott, Shackleton and the Heroic Age of Antarctic Science – Edward J. Larson (NF/history/geog)
• The Round Tree – Louise Erdrich (F)
• Started Early, Took my Dog – Kate Atkinson (F)
• Dolores Claiborne – Stephen King (F)
• An American Marriage – Tayari Jones (F)
• The Little Princesses: The Story of the Queen’s Childhood by her Nanny, Marion Crawford – Marion Crawford (NF/bio/auto)
• The Secret of the Chimneys – Agatha Christie (F/murder)

Already read and finished the Stephen King book (ok) and now about to start on the then-scandalous Crawford memoir about the Queen’s childhood (and that of her sister). Ohh la la. (Rather a craze on the royals right now. 🙂 )

Summer reading

School and grades are now completely done which means, for me, that I can start the Summer of Liz. I don’t have anything required (outside the normal responsibilities) so the next three months are mine, all mine. 🙂 (I’m very lucky, I know.)

So – how to wisely spend this time? HA! I’m going to read and then read some more. I’m going to go through my wardrobe to see which outfits I can create/combine (just for fun) and I’m going to go and see my twin sis in CA for a few days.

So, speaking of reading (as we were), what titles have I read since the end of school? The above image tells the story:

• Chasing the Monsoon – Alexander Frater (NF). Reread and ok. Probably doesn’t need to live on my shelves any more though. :-} (Off the current TBR shelf.)
• Soul Clap Hands and Sing – Paule Marshall (F). I’ve read and enjoyed other Marshall work. This was a collection of short stories. Meh. Library.
• Majesty – Robert Lacey (NF/bio). I love the majority of Lacey’s work (good sense of humor) and and enjoying the older bio of the monarch. Nothing too mind-shattering but enjoyable all the same. (Off the current TBR shelf.)
• Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier (F). Loving this classic. (Off the current TBR shelf.)
• 100 Great Artists: A Visual Journey from Fra Angelico to Andy Warhol – Charlotte Gerlings (NF/history/art). I’ve really been interested in getting some more culture so got this out of the library. A quick but wide-ranging tour of some of the artworks of the world (mostly [all?] Western hemisphere).
• The Pale Horse – Agatha Christie (F). A murder mystery all wrapped by the end of your cup of tea. I do like a Christie every now and then. Library.

New TBR shelf…

Here are the titles on the new TBR shelf:

• Letters of Note: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience – Shaun Usher (ed.) (NF/socio)
• On Doctoring: Stories, Poems, Essays – Richard Reynolds, M.D. and John Stone, M.D. (eds.) (NF/socio)
• The Girls from Winnetka – Marcia Chellis (NF/bio)
• A Victorian Courtship: The Story of Beatrice Potter and Sidney Webb – Jeanne McKenzie (NF/history/bio)
• Cold: Adventures in the World’s Frozen Places – Bill Streever (NF/geog)
• My Family and Other Animals – Gerald Durrell (NF/nature)
• All Things Wise and Wonderful – James Herriott (NF/nature)
• The Book of Not – Tsitsi Dangarembga (F)
• Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card (F/sci fi)
• Majesty: Elizabeth II and the House of Windsor – Robert Lacey (NF/bio). Read. Good.
• Time and Again – Jack Finney (F)
• On Borrowed Wings – Chandra Prasad (F)
• Olive Kitteridge – Elizabeth Strout (F)
• Gentlemen Prefer Blondes – Anita Loos (F). Read. Good.
• Mr. Chartwell – Rebecca Hunt (F)
• Tales of a Female Nomad: Living at Large in the World – Rita Golden Gelman (NF/travel). Read. Good.
• Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey – The Countess of Carnarvan (NF/history)
• Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier (F). Read. Good.

As always, the usual guidelines are in place: these are just suggestions for me and I’m happy to go off-piste if I want to. It’s summer time rules here! 🙂

A Gentleman in Moscow – Amor Towles (2016)

“By their very nature, human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully contradictory, that they deserve not only our consideration, but our reconsideration – and unwavering determination to withhold our opinion until we have engaged with them in every possible setting at every possible hour.”

Just loved this read by author Amor Towles – enough so that I immediately went to the library and booked out his other book, Rules of Civility and am very looking forward to that read.

(This rarely happens so fingers are crossed that it’s a good read. It was published in 2011 so a few years ago now and on his author website, he seems to have written some other well-received works so more to dig into at some point. Oooh. And he’s written an intro to the 75^th anniversary edition of Fitzgerald’s Tender in the Night (Scribner, 2019). (Impressive.))

So what’s so good about this Towles/Gentleman in Moscow? I think one of the main attractions was that it was so well written. Towles is a master at the written word and he’s developed an interesting character in Count Alexander Rostov that I really cared about and thought about, even if I wasn’t actually reading the text at that particular moment.

The gentleman in question is a Russian count who has been given a lifetime sentence in 1922 for a perceived infraction against the government. This sentence means that he can live for the rest of his days in a lovely posh hotel but he can never leave the premises so this isn’t a high-action novel or anything. It’s a thoughtful and fascinating look at a man who tries his best to make the most of a bad situation and who has lived a full life prior to the incarceration.  

Rostov has never held a job but he is well-educated and witty. With this enforced sentence, he is forced to watch history change Russia as it happens outside his windows. Just fascinating and difficult to put down.

There is no doubt that this will be in the year’s Top Ten Books at the end of the year. For sure.

“After all, an educated man should admire any course of study no matter how arcane, if it be pursued with curiosity and devotion.”

And then I just liked this quote:

“As at home in a tin as it is in Limoges, coffee can energize the industrious at dawn, calm the reflective at noon, or raise the spirits of the beleaguered in the middle of the night.”

Library Loot: April 22 2021

Library Loot for April 22 2021:

• South Sea Tales – Jack London (F/short stories). Just saw that this is short stories. Bleugh. I am not an aficionado of short stories. What was I thinking?
• The Pale Horse – Agatha Christie (F/mystery). Can’t go wrong with a Christie.
• The Secret River – Kate Grenville (F) Wanted to read some Aussie lit.
• The Lion in the Living Room – Abigail Tucker (NF/bio). We have kitties in our life: what can I say?
• A Gentleman in Moscow – Amor Towlers (F). (Just finished this. Post to come.)
• Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly – Anthony Bourdain (NF/autobio). I’m into cooking right and although this is a reread, I remember it as pretty good.
• Cooking Light: Dinner ASAP (NF/recipes) – I know: me with a cookbook but I’m searching for new recipes. 🙂

So – any ideas of what I’ve picked up? Any recommendations?

Library Loot: April 07 2021

Loot from my local library included the following:

• Belfast Diary – John Conroy (NF about 1980s Northern Ireland during the Troubles).
• Sharks in the Time of Saviors – Kawai Strong Washburn (F). One of former Pres. Obama’s favorite books of 2020, apparently. If it’s good enough for him… 😉
• A Caribbean Mystery – Agatha Christie (F/murder mystery). Love me some Christie.
• The Secret River – Kate Grenville (F/Australian). I’ve heard good things…
• Dolores Claiborne – Stephen King (F). I would like to read more King so seeing if I can handle his less-scary titles first.
• Emma – Jane Austen (F). In the mood for a good classic.
• The Water Museum – Luis Alberta Urrea (F/short stories). I don’t always get on that well with short stories but I’ll give them a go with Urrea’s work since he’s really good.)