This Side of Paradise

I was so sure that I had read This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald (free at Feedbooks) but it turns out I haven’t! I’m working on it right now, and I love it. One of my favourite books has always been The Great Gatsby because of characters like Gatsby and Daisy, and I’m starting to love Amory Blaine as well! I love Fitzgerald so much because of his distinctly American feel, especially in the wildness of the 1920s. Excellent.

Also it’s quite rare that a book makes one laugh out loud (unless it’s outright comedy), but I actually did when I read this great line:

The invitation to Miss Myra St. Claire’s bobbing party spent the morning in his coat pocket, where it had an intense physical affair with a dusty piece of peanut brittle. (Location 112)

Benjamin Button cont.

The Curious Tale of Benjamin Button was great! Definitely an A, although I wish Fitzgerald could have spent more time describing some of the years of his life, and more about his relationship with his wife, which from the trailers the movie seems to focus on that. Ryan of 3000books sent me a link showing how they made Brad Pitt look so many different ages! So cool – now I’m excited to see the movie whenever I can get my hands on it.

I really liked the part when Benjamin and Hildegarde first meet and she tells him:

“You’re just the romantic age,” she continued – “fifty. Twenty-five is too worldly-wise; thirty is apt to be pale from overwork; forty is the age of long stories that take a whole cigar to tell; sixty is – oh, sixty is too near seventy; but fifty is the mellow age. I love fifty.”

I kind of just want to shout at her and smack her a bit and tell her that she’s ridiculous. But later on I do feel so bad for her as Benjamin becomes younger and younger, which if you somehow don’t know, is caused by some freak-type of disease that he was born with. And Hildegarde just gets older, as is expected, but it’s so sad how she feels that Benjamin is doing it on purpose, and sad also how Benjamin somehow blames Hildegarde for not remaining beautiful enough to keep his interest. Overall just so sad but really interesting to investigate a life which works… backwards.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

I started reading The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald (free at Feedbooks). For the record, I haven’t yet seen the movie but my mother loved it and I’m planning on watching it eventually. I didn’t know it was such a short story! But anyway I love the tone, how it’s clearly a society of What Will They Think? The imagery is great though – for someone who hasn’t seen the movie, imagine a wee little hairy man in a young boy’s outfit playing with a rattle! So far I find it all very funny in that subdued sort of way.