The Fault in Our Stars and The Great Gatsby

I'm back!  I've been away for some time, but I've been reading some good stuff lately and I thought I'd share what's been on my bookshelf lately.

Just recently I read John Green's latest novel The Fault in Our Stars, which is a touching story about cancer patient, Hazel Grace as she copes with surviving into her mid-teen years despite having terminal thyroid cancer and lungs that suck at being lungs.  During a support group meeting she befriends Augustus Waters, who becomes her bosom friend, although she reserves her feelings for him because she doesn't want to be a bomb in his life if she dies.

The language is lyrical and moving, the plot is well-structured and the pace is smooth.  John Green has established his ability to craft a solid fiction that matters as much as though it really happened.  I checked this out from the public library, but purchased it before I was 2/3s through because I know this is a novel I will return to again and again.  The Fault in Our Stars interestingly demonstrates a fine use of literary references from T.S. Eliot to William Carlos Williams, but reminds us that there is some fine reading to be had in video game adaptions.  I recommend this novel to everyone.

Another novel that I finished just recently was F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel The Great Gatsby.  I don't know why I waited so long to read this novel.  It was fantastic.  The basic premise follows Nick Carraway, an up-and-comer from the mid-West who moved to New York to make a living selling bonds.  By luck he happened to move into a house that was next door to the fabulous home of Jay Gatsby, a popular and wealthy man who threw parties that people showed up to even if they weren't invited!  We come to find out that Gatsby has been in love with Nick's cousin, Daisy.  Daisy loved him too, except that while he was away at war she grew impatient and married Tom Buchanan.  There is a beautifully conceived plot that smoothly flows towards a dramatic climax.  The novel is beautifully written; more novel should continue to be written in this tradition.

Part of the reason I had chosen to read Gatsby now is because I have decided to work my way through the ALA most challenged or banned classic books.  The Great Gatsby is listed as the most challenged and/or banned book.  This is probably due to the illegal activities such as boot-legging of alcohol during prohibition (the setting is the 1920s), marital infidelity on the part of a few people, and of course a murder.  While extremely mild by today's standards, these were probably enough to trigger quite a bit of outrage, as evidenced by the number of challenges it has received and still receives.

Many seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds will encounter this work on an AP Lit syllabus, and this is one of those novels that I would say every almost-adult should read because of some of the very interesting insights that are made throughout the novel.  One in particular that sticks out vividly is the problem that Daisy can not live up to the expectation that Gatsby has imagined of her all these years while he has worked to be reunited with her.  These are important lessons to identify during one's formidable years (oh, and I should probably mention that the open lines of this novel are perhaps my favorite of any novel so far.), and unfortunately it is too late for me to read them now for the first time, having already arrived at such ideas on my own long before approaching this work.  But with that all said, this is an important work--although it may not be entirely young adult--it speaks to the spirit of the young adult, and rich with the themes most valuable to those coming of age.