Off The Shelf

The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 180 pages I don't feel I have the credibility to really write a review of the novel, therefore I would like to use the opportunity of this 100th post to discuss what is said to be the greatest American novel of all time: The Great Gatsby . The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and beauty in the world.   - page 68 New York, 1922. The Jazz Age is in full swing, and with World War I at a close, the American people are restless, alive with post-war excitement and opportunity. Nick Carraway has just moved to Long Island looking to get started in the "bond business", and winds up buying a home next door to the grand and mysterious Jay Gatsby. After being invited to one of his neighbor's lavish parties, Nick soon learns of Gatsby's secrets, and the love he is desperately trying to find again. The following are some of my favorite p...

Spring has arrived. The season took its time this year, waltzing in a week or so later that its scheduled date. But, never the less, it has come. And, with the calender telling us it is April, I thought I would also take a moment to point out this month is National Poetry Month. The following is the poem O Sweet Spontaneous by e.e. cummings, written in 1920. Many reviews of this poem I have seen read in to this poem much deeper that its surface meaning - relating it to society and its problems - but I like this piece for its ease. e.e. cummings describes spring's beauty without ever actually describing it. He doesn't embellish the blue skies, or the smell of the lilies. He doesn't listen to the bees buzzing or the robins chirping. The sun does not warm his face, nor do the new emerald green leaves give him shade. To him, spring just is. O sweet spontaneous earth how often have the doting fingers of prurient philosophers pinched and poked thee ,has the na...

Between Shades of Gray Ruta Sepetys 338 pages It is 1941 and World War II is tearing through Europe, but the horrific events taking place in the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia are unknown to the rest of the world. Fifteen-year-old Lina Vilkas is winding down the school year, and spending her free-time lost in colored pencils and paint, when a knock on her front door changes her life forever. She and her family are taken from their home in Lithuania by the Soviet secret police and are thrown into cattle cars bound for northern Siberia. Along the way, Lina embeds clues into her drawings hoping if they are passed along, they might reach her father, and bring him back to them. In this moving story, Lina will spend the next twelve years fighting for her life as well as others' in the prison camps the world never knew about. The horrific events that occurred between 1941 and 1954 under the rule of Josef Stalin was a part of history I had never heard of before readi...