The Great Gatsby | F. Scott Fitzgerald | Penguin Books

When I decided to graduate from reading books written by Enid Blyton or published by Ladybird Books,   I discovered shelves of books in the bookshops and local library with a penguin on the covers and spines.  The books in the local library had yellow pages and peeling covers that were frightening to a young child trying to move away from hardcopy books with large prints.  The books in the bookshops though, were nice and crisp and inviting.

After many trips to the bookshop comparing the thickness of the books, I settled on what I though could be a simple enough read from Penguin Books - The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  The version I own is not the 2011 paperback version that is available on Penguin Books now, but an older one from 1990.  I guessed the bookshop bought a lot of Penguin Books books then, thinking those would fly off the shelves, but they probably did not, thus giving me a chance to own this version, and I prefer the cover of the version I own.

After a couple of pages, I had to put the book down and away.  The language was English, but the sentence structures strange and the narrative style alien, me being so used to the style of Enid Blyton.

With movement restricted since last year, I dusted off my copy of The Great Gatsby and tried to read it again.  It was still difficult to read, but now with Wikipedia, I realized why The Great Gatsby was such a difficult read for it.  It was written and set in the Jazz Age in USA before the Great Depression happened - an era that was wholly unfamiliar to me.  The opulence of Gatsby's properties and description of how people with inherited wealth lived contrasted sharply with the current wokeism-liberal atmosphere that the left expound.  Gatsby's attempt to match up to Daisy's lifestyle and social status seem almost sad.

I succeeded in finishing the book now, yet I'm still quite unable to grasp the emotions in Fitzgerald's narrative.  Perhaps it could be the fact that there is no one around me with inherited wealth (and displaying such flapperish attitude) that I am unable to feel Gatsby's sense of inferiority.  Or perhaps I need to get older and more experienced in live before The Great Gatsby finally makes sense for me.