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3.48 AVERAGE
3.48 AVERAGE
Well, I got better at reading poetry. The story didn't engage me as much as the one behind Gatsby. Maybe my opinion of it will change when I read it again this spring.
Publicado originalmente: El Extraño Gato del Cuento
This Side of Paradise se me hizo un libro interesante el cual me falló bastante con el final. Si bien la sinopsis ya nos dice que este libro a largo de los años se ha tomado como una especie de biografía del escritor, yo no lo quise tomar así ¿Por qué? Porque después de terminar el libro lo siento más como una excusa que como la meta del libro, por decirlo de algún modo.
No es un libro malo, tiene una gran y exquisita paleta de personaje femeninos. En inicios de año muchas escritoras estuvieron apoyando la campaña "Personajes femeninos diferentes" y para mí, This Side of Paradise es un buen ejemplo de lo que se pide. Tanto como Beatrice, Rosalind, Isabelle y Eleanor, que tienen un ligero parecido solo que cada una tiene algo llamativo que no tiene ningún otro personaje que haya leído antes, al menos en literatura Young Adult, y la verdad es que me gustaría leer más de estas personalidades.
Pero me falló en que no tengo una sensación de conclusión, no soy de las que se molestan con finales abiertos, varios de mis libros favoritos son así, es sólo con A Este Lado del Paraíso siento que me cortaron a mitad de algo, como si fuera el inicio de una serie de libros. No sé si es solo algo que me pasó a mí pero no estoy feliz con el final, Amory se me hizo muy hipócrita al final. Durante todo el libro me gustó como personaje, incluso logré identificarme con él varias veces, sobre todo con su cinismo y como el escritor nos lo describía. "Siempre se trataba de lo que llegaría a ser, nunca de lo que era" Sobre todo esa frase se me quedó grabada durante días. Las personas que nos pasamos más tiempo en la intimidad de nuestras mentes lo entendemos bastante bien.
El personaje que me desagradó en este libro fue Monseñor Darcy, se me hizo tan presuntuoso y uno de los que alentaba a Amory ser cómo era. Creo que también es un poco de envidia por mi parte, ya me gustaría tener a alguien quién crea que todas mis tonterías las hago porque soy un ser especial.
Tengo un montón de citas guardadas y ahora que estuve haciendo un poco de investigación para la reseña, aumenté alguna más, sin duda para futura relectura. Mi problema fue el final tan político y fuera de sentido pero por todo lo demás me gustó.
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This Side of Paradise se me hizo un libro interesante el cual me falló bastante con el final. Si bien la sinopsis ya nos dice que este libro a largo de los años se ha tomado como una especie de biografía del escritor, yo no lo quise tomar así ¿Por qué? Porque después de terminar el libro lo siento más como una excusa que como la meta del libro, por decirlo de algún modo.
No es un libro malo, tiene una gran y exquisita paleta de personaje femeninos. En inicios de año muchas escritoras estuvieron apoyando la campaña "Personajes femeninos diferentes" y para mí, This Side of Paradise es un buen ejemplo de lo que se pide. Tanto como Beatrice, Rosalind, Isabelle y Eleanor, que tienen un ligero parecido solo que cada una tiene algo llamativo que no tiene ningún otro personaje que haya leído antes, al menos en literatura Young Adult, y la verdad es que me gustaría leer más de estas personalidades.
Pero me falló en que no tengo una sensación de conclusión, no soy de las que se molestan con finales abiertos, varios de mis libros favoritos son así, es sólo con A Este Lado del Paraíso siento que me cortaron a mitad de algo, como si fuera el inicio de una serie de libros. No sé si es solo algo que me pasó a mí pero no estoy feliz con el final, Amory se me hizo muy hipócrita al final. Durante todo el libro me gustó como personaje, incluso logré identificarme con él varias veces, sobre todo con su cinismo y como el escritor nos lo describía. "Siempre se trataba de lo que llegaría a ser, nunca de lo que era" Sobre todo esa frase se me quedó grabada durante días. Las personas que nos pasamos más tiempo en la intimidad de nuestras mentes lo entendemos bastante bien.
El personaje que me desagradó en este libro fue Monseñor Darcy, se me hizo tan presuntuoso y uno de los que alentaba a Amory ser cómo era. Creo que también es un poco de envidia por mi parte, ya me gustaría tener a alguien quién crea que todas mis tonterías las hago porque soy un ser especial.
Tengo un montón de citas guardadas y ahora que estuve haciendo un poco de investigación para la reseña, aumenté alguna más, sin duda para futura relectura. Mi problema fue el final tan político y fuera de sentido pero por todo lo demás me gustó.
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I so wanted to love this book.
F. Scott Fitzgerald has long been one of my literary idols. The effortless way he drips detail into fluid, poetic prose has dragged me since that one day in eleventh grade English when I scanned the opening lines of The Great Gatsby for the first time. I've been hooked ever since, and have even tried (and failed, and tried again) to capture its essence in my own work.
That easy, languid style is present in this book. That's what made it so sensational, and it's what still has copies flying off shelves and into the hands of eager literature buffs. I appreciate that style, and I appreciate the story that it tells, but the characters just didn't grab me the way I wished they would. I found myself just not caring what happened to them. I was bored by them, and that made me apathetic toward the book as a whole. I wanted to care - I tried to care - but, ultimately, I just couldn't. From a literary standpoint, I can understand how this book boosted Fitzgerald to fame. The prose is absolutely beautiful, and he weaves thoughts and actions in a seamless blend that pull you easily from page to page. He threads themes of love and lust and greed and ambition effortlessly into even the simplest of sentences, and he truly as a talent for building fictional words on the foundations of his world's reality. But personally, I just didn't find myself rooting for Amory or caring much about what happened with his varied courtships.
F. Scott Fitzgerald has long been one of my literary idols. The effortless way he drips detail into fluid, poetic prose has dragged me since that one day in eleventh grade English when I scanned the opening lines of The Great Gatsby for the first time. I've been hooked ever since, and have even tried (and failed, and tried again) to capture its essence in my own work.
That easy, languid style is present in this book. That's what made it so sensational, and it's what still has copies flying off shelves and into the hands of eager literature buffs. I appreciate that style, and I appreciate the story that it tells, but the characters just didn't grab me the way I wished they would. I found myself just not caring what happened to them. I was bored by them, and that made me apathetic toward the book as a whole. I wanted to care - I tried to care - but, ultimately, I just couldn't. From a literary standpoint, I can understand how this book boosted Fitzgerald to fame. The prose is absolutely beautiful, and he weaves thoughts and actions in a seamless blend that pull you easily from page to page. He threads themes of love and lust and greed and ambition effortlessly into even the simplest of sentences, and he truly as a talent for building fictional words on the foundations of his world's reality. But personally, I just didn't find myself rooting for Amory or caring much about what happened with his varied courtships.
3 stars. I really enjoy Fitzgerald’s writing style. It’s very witty and quick but this story wise wasn’t my favorite. It’s a very easy book to get through but I found that I was nowhere near as invested as I was in The Great Gatsby. I liked Amory and thought he was an interesting character but it just wasn’t enough. I’m glad to have finally read more by Fitzgerald though even though I think I’ve already read the best he has to offer.
2.5/5
I feel like I expected more from this book because of reading [b:The Great Gatsby|4671|The Great Gatsby|F. Scott Fitzgerald|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1361191055s/4671.jpg|245494]. I mean, that book is an American classic, no doubt about it, but this book? Not so much.
Written after his failed attempt to marry Zelda Sayre, I can feel the cynicism dripping off it, all aimed at women. This felt like a large diary entry to me. Fitzy here pouring out all he felt about his failures in life and how he never would get to be where he wanted to be.
"Often through life you will really be at your worst when you seem to think best of yourself."
That quote basically captures it all. Amory Blaine, each time he turned out being his worst, felt his best. Typically that happened in the arms of a woman.
The other half of this book was all character study. Fitzy going on and on about Amory and his life and school and women and I stopped caring. It was too much back story and the heart of the analytical actually was a few pages long.
The philosophy in the book does capture post WWI America, but it was just a failed attempt at Wilde's writing. I caught that early on with how Fitzy made characters and the wild remarks he made that almost seemed straight out of something by Wilde. My love of Wilde probably put this book higher up than it should have been.
The story was weak in plot. I get what it was about and how Amory lost it all, and only then he could discover himself. Only, the back story encompassed all of the book. All of it. Getting to the root of the novel took far longer than I wanted. I felt it could have been set up differently. Reader introduced at the end, then gradually the whole story was revealed. Would have been more interesting for me that way.
All in all, I enjoyed analyzing Fitzy through this book. It told quite a bit of his state of mind while he wrote it, but the actual story? It wasn't too good. Makes sense why The Great Gatsby is the one remembered while this one was something that people loved back then, but it kind of was forgotten over the years.
I feel like I expected more from this book because of reading [b:The Great Gatsby|4671|The Great Gatsby|F. Scott Fitzgerald|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1361191055s/4671.jpg|245494]. I mean, that book is an American classic, no doubt about it, but this book? Not so much.
Written after his failed attempt to marry Zelda Sayre, I can feel the cynicism dripping off it, all aimed at women. This felt like a large diary entry to me. Fitzy here pouring out all he felt about his failures in life and how he never would get to be where he wanted to be.
"Often through life you will really be at your worst when you seem to think best of yourself."
That quote basically captures it all. Amory Blaine, each time he turned out being his worst, felt his best. Typically that happened in the arms of a woman.
The other half of this book was all character study. Fitzy going on and on about Amory and his life and school and women and I stopped caring. It was too much back story and the heart of the analytical actually was a few pages long.
The philosophy in the book does capture post WWI America, but it was just a failed attempt at Wilde's writing. I caught that early on with how Fitzy made characters and the wild remarks he made that almost seemed straight out of something by Wilde. My love of Wilde probably put this book higher up than it should have been.
The story was weak in plot. I get what it was about and how Amory lost it all, and only then he could discover himself. Only, the back story encompassed all of the book. All of it. Getting to the root of the novel took far longer than I wanted. I felt it could have been set up differently. Reader introduced at the end, then gradually the whole story was revealed. Would have been more interesting for me that way.
All in all, I enjoyed analyzing Fitzy through this book. It told quite a bit of his state of mind while he wrote it, but the actual story? It wasn't too good. Makes sense why The Great Gatsby is the one remembered while this one was something that people loved back then, but it kind of was forgotten over the years.
I love The Great Gatsby, and Tender is the Night is in my top 5 books of all time. But I had a hard time getting into This Side of Paradise. It could be that Fitzgerald hadn't developed a sophisticated style yet. I didn't really connect with Amory, though parts of his story were fascinating. Mostly he was just a spoiled brat, falling into a slow decline. "Egotist" really is the perfect way to describe him.
This book. I loved it in the beginning, I hated it in the middle, and then I went back to liking it at the end. In the middle I kept feeling like it was waste of time, but by the end I was wanting to re-read it all. Still formulating thoughts. Not nearly as good as The Great Gatsby (which is a pretty high bar to reach for), but especially considering that Fitzgerald wrote this when he was 23, this is a great work. It has a timeless quality to it and he definitely nabs some truths about collegiate youth.
3.5 stars
Oh man. It finally happened. I re-read a book that I loved when I was younger and didn't nearly enjoy it as much as the first time. I read The Great Gatsby in school and fell in love with F. Scott Fitzgerald. I bought and read all of his books shortly after. I have been wanting to re-read this one for a while and since this year marks the 100th anniversary of its publication, I thought it was a perfect time. There is still a lot of interesting stuff in the book and I see how it laid the groundwork for literature that came after. Amory is so deeply vapid, as are many of the other characters in the book. There appears to be some self-awareness and criticism of it, but that didn't make it easier to get through.
Oh man. It finally happened. I re-read a book that I loved when I was younger and didn't nearly enjoy it as much as the first time. I read The Great Gatsby in school and fell in love with F. Scott Fitzgerald. I bought and read all of his books shortly after. I have been wanting to re-read this one for a while and since this year marks the 100th anniversary of its publication, I thought it was a perfect time. There is still a lot of interesting stuff in the book and I see how it laid the groundwork for literature that came after. Amory is so deeply vapid, as are many of the other characters in the book. There appears to be some self-awareness and criticism of it, but that didn't make it easier to get through.