Honor's Book Report #3

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York. Charles Scribner’s Sons: 1925.

Reason, Type and Setting
I selected this book because I have heard many great things about it from my friends. Another reason that actually prompted me to read this book was that I saw F. Scott Fitzgerald had written the story that the new movie “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”. It is a fictional novel that takes place in New York in the 1920s.

Plot
The story follows Nick Carraway, a man who moves from the Midwest to a neighborhood in Long Island known as West Egg. He moves to New York in order to obtain a job in bond salesman. Across the harbor is another community known as East Egg, in which his cousin Daisy and her husband Tom live. After visiting them, he and Tom go into New York City where he meets Tom’s mistress, Myrtle. The three then go to a party at Tom’s apartment. Later that night, Tom ends up breaking Myrtle’s nose after getting in an argument about Daisy. Soon, Nick gets invited to his next door neighbor, Gatsby’s party. Gatsby is a mysterious man who is very rich and is known for throwing huge parties every weekend. Nick and Jordan, Daisy’s friend whom he is having an affair with, decide to attend it together. During the party, Nick meets the infamous Gatsby, and the two become friends. Nick finds out that Gatsby’s true purpose for throwing these parties was to impress Daisy. Nick agrees to set up a meeting for the two. Tom finds out about Gatsby’s love for Daisy and tells her that he’s a bootlegger. Gatsby then says the only reason she married Tom was because at the time Gatsby didn’t have enough money. Daisy and Gatsby drive to Gatsby’s house, and on the way, Daisy hits and kills Myrtle. Myrtle’s husband, George, thinks that she was killed by who she was having an affair with, and sees Gatsby’s car, so he kills him then kills himself. Nick then moves back to the Midwest.

Character
One extremely important character in this novel is Jay Gatsby. He is about thirty years old, mysterious and has an amazing smile. He has gained his wealth through participating in the criminal business of bootlegging and other illegal activities. He grew up in poverty, but always wanted to be wealthy. He fell in love with Daisy but went off to fight in World War I as an officer. After he came back, he found that Daisy was married and promised to do all in his power to win her back. In a sense the story revolves around him, even from the beginning when Nick hasn’t yet met him and doesn’t know all this. His parties are greatly known in the entire area. However, Nick’s first impressions of Gatsby are far different than the true Jay Gatsby, who is merely doing all this to impress Daisy.

Evaluation
I truly enjoyed reading this novel. It was amazingly well written and I felt that the author did a great job of describing the situations, both physically and emotionally. It really interested me because of this and it gave me some great insight into the time period as well. It informed me about the kind of lifestyles that certain people experienced during this time. This book makes several strong points about life. In my opinion, the strongest and most important point of this novel is about the American Dream, and how it began to fall apart as people were gaining material objects. People gained wealth fast and didn’t necessarily understand had to responsibly deal with themselves. They would try to spend their way out of this, but wouldn’t gain happiness. The saying “money can’t buy happiness” can be applied to this story. The people think that the pursuit of happiness and the pursuit of wealth are synonymous; however, they learn that they are not, but continue to try to fill the emptiness that they are experiencing with more money. Gatsby himself throws huge parties in hope to fill his emptiness and longing for Daisy as well as to impress her. I would definitely recommend this book to people. I feel that it’s an extremely well written story about life in the 1920’s.
This book can relate to real life in my ways. It reminds me of certain relationship and friendship issues that I have had in the past such as jealousy, regret and cheating. It also can be related to America as a whole (pre-economic recession) and how people in the upper classes (particularly people who have recently found wealth), deal with their feelings. It’s important for people to read because it reminds us how we are all individuals beneath our material possessions.

I can relate myself to Jay Gatsby because I know what it’s like to have someone that you deeply care about move on from you, and feel so strongly about trying to gain them back into your life. If I was Jay Gatsby, I probably would have done the same thing because I felt that although he was a bit nervous in approaching Daisy, it was probably best how he did it. Some people would say that he should move on, but I understand that sometimes that is close to impossible to do. If Daisy had not of hit Myrtle, consequently causing the murder of Gatsby, she may have chosen to divorce Tom and marry him instead. This would have completely altered the ending of the book, causing it to have a different message. A message of hope and resolution, but that’s not how it worked out, and that gives it more believability because life doesn’t always work out for the best.

Author, Context and Trivia
“The Great Gatsby” was the first book that I have read by F. Scott Fitzgerald, but it has interested me in reading more books by him. He has written four novels (including “The Beautiful and the Damned” and “Tender is the Night”), as well as many short stories. Supposedly, my dad’s relatives, who were pretty well off and from St. Paul, Minnesota, used to party with F. Scott Fitzgerald. This book is recognized as one of the best book in American History and is considered one of the Great American Novels. I can’t really relate this book to anything that I have read before, but somehow it seems kind of familiar. I would like to read some of this author’s short stories. I think that this book has really made an impact in my life by reinforcing the feelings that I have towards wealth and how it can’t fill emptiness. I enjoyed reading this novel and I feel it has benefited me.

Book Report #3

The Taking by Dean Koontz

Dean Koontz. The Taking. New York. Bantam Books: 2004.

Reason, Type and Setting
I chose to read this book because my mom had read it, and it looked pretty interesting, so I decided to give it a try. It’s an apocalyptic horror novel that takes place in a small town located in the mountains outside of San Bernadino.

Plot
The story follows a married couple of Molly and Neil Sloan. Molly awakens one night to notice a strange occurrence in the rain outside. She finds coyotes on her porch and walks outside. She is confused as to why the animals would try to take comfort there. She then notices the strange smell coming from the glowing rain. She realizes it smells like semen. Her husband wakes up from a nightmare and senses a presence above their house. They are compelled to head into town where they meet with fellow town members at the local bar. They notice that dense a fog has materialized. They hear that entire world is under this same threat, which they understand to be alien by now. The town members divide themselves up into several groups based on their views and intentions. They find a strange, alien fungus in the bathroom; they also find that certain people are beginning to act very strange, as if they have been influenced by the aliens. As an object is flying overhead, an inanimate object (a doll) is brought to life. The objects that are above have the ability to look inside a person and make them feel completely exposed. They then meet a dog named Virgil that can somehow communicate with Molly telepathically and leads them to find children in distress. They save the children and learn that the adults are disappearing from either floating into the sky happily or being dragged into the ground in agony. The dead also began to come to life. But in the end they are able to save the children with many other couples who saved children and were led by physic animals.

Character
Molly Sloan is the main character of this novel, who happens to be an author herself. She is fairly attractive and around thirty years old with long, dark hair. Her husband, Neil and she are a loveable couple who happen to be put into this apocalyptic situation. They are able to find comfort through each other and that is very important to Molly. Molly is very intelligent and strong willed. However, she too has her troubles. When she was around six years old, her mentally unstable father came into her classroom and killed the teacher and several of her classmates. He was imprisoned, but during the time of the novel, he recently escaped in order to find Molly. When he does confront her, she realizes that he is different than before, even more sinister. He tells her about how he killed a small boy and gets sexually excited when he thinks about this. Among all this turmoil, Molly stays pure and does all that she can to help others.

Evaluation
I had a good time reading this novel. I thoroughly enjoyed it because of its horror and suspense aspects, as well as the deeper, more philosophical themes throughout the story. It was very interesting in the sense that it was a page true page turner, with each page bringing new strange horrors or revelations and it also gave strong messages of hope mixed with religious values. I feel that it was extremely strange to be mix these two seemingly opposite genres into one book. This concoction didn’t go extremely smooth because it seemed a bit forced, but the author did a relatively job doing this. It made many points about life, but the true intention of the novel was sort of a modern adaptation of Noah’s Ark, in which the adult humans are taken to either heaven or hell and the children are gathered to start over. The aliens basically represent true evil. Although I am not Christian I can see how there are important values gathered from these stories and I gained a better understanding of these values and where they stem from by looking at this modern adaptation. I would possibly recommend this book to someone who is interested in thrilling, suspense novels, and enjoys being entertained, but is not bothered by cheesy aspects. Although this is decent novel, it falls short in many ways and is not anything extraordinary.
This book seems extremely farfetched and fictional, but it does include the beliefs of several religions, in which many people believe strongly in. The whole concept of the apocalypse and judgment day in which the good people are saved and the bad ones are taken down to hell. The only kinds of things that I can relate to this book are also fictional (such as “The Day the Earth Stood Still”). Many people also believe that the end of the world is supposed to be coming to an end in 2012. This book gives a pretty good depiction of what could possibly happen in this situation and how people would react. It’s not really an important book for anyone to read, but could provide someone with an interesting perspective mixed with some great horror and fiction.

I would compare myself to the character of Neil for a number of reasons. First of all because I am a strong willed person, and feel that I would act similarly in this kind of situation. I would do all that I can to protect the ones that I love and try to help out other people as well. I wouldn’t be afraid to fight of the aliens, but at the same time I would be smart about it and focus on survival rather than getting revenge on the aliens.

Author, Context and Trivia

Although I had attempted reading a book by Dean Koontz in the past, this was the first one that I got really into. Even though it wasn’t the very best book that I have read, and didn’t have the strongest, most meaningful message, I was truly entertained by this story. If you can look past the cheesiness, and think about this book with an open mind, you’ll definitely have a great time reading his work. The other Dean Koontz book that I read was called “Velocity”, but I lost interest before I really got into it. I know Dean Koontz has written many books and TV show scripts, but I haven’t really heard of any in particular. I also know that he has been considered a huge Stephen King knockoff (but not as good). I have seen several movies based on Stephen King books, and really enjoyed them. I like some aspects of Dean Koontz’s work, but feel that it could have been done better. Maybe Stephen King will be what I am looking for, so I will check out some of his work in the future. Overall, this book was a great read, and has given me some deeper understanding into the perspectives expressed in this book.