Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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I can’t believe I’m going to say it, but the movie is better

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald

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I saw this movie years ago, when it came out in theaters, and I remember liking it. I’m a bit of a sucker for tragic romances, though. After discovering that I really like F. Scott Fitzgerald last month, I thought I’d give this story a go. And while I did enjoy it – I actually think the movie is quite a bit better. The movie abandons much of the plot, and significantly changes the characters. In the movie, Benjamin is abandoned by his widowed father […]

500 words on how I have nothing to say

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

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There can’t possibly be something left to say about this book. It’s been a keystone in the American education system since the 1960s, with literally millions of students reading and analyzing this book. To some degree, this is a testament to the timelessness of the novel, and I can’t imagine being an English teacher having to dredge this text year after year. But I’m not an English teacher. I’m just a guy who skipped most of the required books that serve as the glue to […]

My new obsession

The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald

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I’m fast approaching 40, and I’ve never read F. Scott Fitzgerald. That seems to be my answer for a lot of the standard reading people do in high school. I can’t stress enough how terrible I was as a student. Also, I can’t stress enough how good I was at finding loopholes. The Beautiful and Damned was Fitzgerald’s second novel, published in 1922, and it is the novel that propelled him into the literary elite. He and Zelda had firmly settled into their marriage, and […]

On the pleasant shore of the French Riviera, about halfway between Marseilles and the Italian border, stands a large, proud, rose-colored hotel.

Tender is the Night by F Scott Fitzgerald

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So there’s apparently two editions of this book out there and my copy is the originally published one, finished by Fitzgerald, and reviewed while he was still alive. He apparently left some notes about changes he could make, and Malcolm Cowley made those changes, and I am generally against such actions, so I am glad, I unwittingly read the original. The novel takes place on the eastern end of the French Riviera, near Cannes it seems, and involves two main storylines that come together initially […]

I’m waiting for it; that green light, I want it (CBR12Bingo2: The Roaring Twenties)

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

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I don’t think that there is a single take on The Great Gatsby that hasn’t been done, overdone, flipped and reversed. But there’s a reason that so many people have written about this damn book – it’s a marvel of precision. There are no words wasted. This is particularly awe inspiring for me, who has never met a five word sentence I couldn’t torture into twenty. In my desperate attempt to say something fresh about a book I’ve read a hundred and eleventy twelve times, I […]

Pretty people doing not pretty things

The Great Gatsby: The Graphic Novel by Fred Fordham

The Great Gatsby: A Graphic Novel Adaptation by K. Woodman-Maynard

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cbr12bingo The Roaring 20’s The Roaring 20’s probably would not be the Roaring 20’s if not for The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I am not going to go all English Lit on you and say the meaning of the story but will tell you it is about several 20-to 30-something rich, spoiled, brats (editorial comment) and their boredom. You can say that our narrator is unreliable, judgmental, the whole works. Or not. But in the end, what it is all about is people […]



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