it's the best book ever written.

That and Moby Dick are the only two books one ever need read.

Plus Huckleberry Finn - if you have the time. Hemingway's short stories and PG Wodehouse.

Best records change all the time - that list never does

Tried and failed to get all the way through it. Fail better next time as Beckett has it. (oooh get me!)

I read it at least every two years and in light of your post, I think it's time to get it out again.

Scoop are the two that I read every couple of years.

had lived too long in pursuit of a single dream.
Something like that, isn't it?
Bloody heartbreaking... I love it.

In honour of James Gatz. As others have already said it's a book you'll find yourself reading again and again. One of the very greatest books I have ever read.

I would have possibly missed out on this novel if it was not on the reading list for the Leaving Cert ( Eire 1977 ) .

Only this week I had been considering re reading it . A couple of years ago Nick Hornby spoke on Radio 4 about re reading Gatzby . I did not catch all his comments but the gist put me off , he said it can be a mistake to revisit literature that meant a lot to you in your youth .

Now, thanks to the massive, I will be off to the library in the morning .

I picked it up last year on holiday. It was in a pile of books left by other tourists. I had heard of it but didn't realise it was a 'classic'. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It did take a chapter or so to get into the rhythm but maybe that's just me. I'd like to know whether the film is worth watching.

I think it is a novel that makes (something approaching full) sense only to an older person (beyond 30 perhaps). I have a friend who says that TGG is a book that just grows and grows and I think I have had the same experience. It is much studied at school which is a shame in a way because students simply do not get it at all. They miss everything including the tragic-comic nature of the re-meeting of Gatsby and Daisy. I think that the opening two pages are the best two opening pages I know. I love its quiet rage and its remarkably beautiful elegaic tone.

Much sympathy for Kenny with Moby Dick. I tried reading it in 95 and then a few years later and then this year when two friends suggested we try it as a support group. I have made major inroads and love it the way that one loves a three day hike. It's great in parts, hard work, wonder if you'll ever make it through, wonder why you are trying. Sometimes, though, you stop in awe and wonder. For example, the extraordinary sentence in Chapter 42 on the 'whiteness of the whale' that is over a page in length. I find that once I treat it as poetry then I am able to go about it without expecting to quickly turn its pages. I'm sure that there are those who can breezily read it but I am not such a one. I admire Sheev's love of it. My two friends read it much more easily than I.

Back on TGG, I read Revolutionary Road this year which I did find breezy in comparison. I wonder if lovers of TGG also like RR or whether they feel that it is too imitative.

Thanks for the thread. I only ever comment on the literary ones since I already know that the Beatles are good.

perfection. Will be interesting rereading it when you know the story.

version unabridged read by Tim Robbins is great. The books description of the party is a work of sheer genius, and as for that far off green light...

I read The Great Gatsby a couple of years ago and was slightly disappointed. Like the movie Citizen Kane, I admired it and could see how it was revolutionary in its time but I didn't love it.

'The Great Gatsby' is an amazingly well written novel - hazily sundrenched, stylish, elegaic, and about the heartbreak of not being who you'd like to be in your dreams. I adore old F. Scott, though his wife was a piece of work by all accounts.

I'd also like to recommend, as a salve to life's pains and an affirmation of life's joys (not to mention the best piece of writing I've ever read about the musician's relationship with his instrument and the sounds he strives to make), 'Sonny's Blues' - a short story in 'Going to Meet the Man' - James Baldwin. I read it about once a year, and it never fails to tug at my heart and give me hope.