Well written and presented

You know how to present your emtions in well decorated forms with colorful text and pictures. The contents are just as well presented.

I usually write a book review if I feel a strong urge about what I read. For some strange reason I don't have much to say after I read Fitzgerald's books. I've read The Great Gat*****y, Tender is the Night, This Side of the Paradise, as well as other lesser known ones like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and some of his short pieces and even plays. He was an icon of 1920s American literature and I read his books with attention and zeal. But I just don't have a strong feeling of any kind. The Great Gat*****y was dramatic enough after the car accident that killed his girl friend and at the end of his suicide. But I thought that was too artificial. A store made up for dramatic effects. He was definitely a master of English and I agree with you, that to read his books one needs to sit down and find a really quite place to read it and be able to appreciate every word. He is just too subtle for me. No wonder women love his novels.

Heimingway is another famous author whose works don't really inspire me, with the exception of The Old Man and Sea. I admired that short novel greatly. I particuarly like his use of very simple words and short phrases to describe the emotions and thoughts of his subjects. Even the those simple words like "a", "the", "is", "are" are well and carefully placed so that readers are not aware of anything else but be absorbed completely in his stories, which in the case of The Old Man and Sea is a really simple one. One can just describe the whole story in less than a dozen words, and yet there have been so much said about this book, I didn't want to heap up my comments on it. I could add nothing new but praise and admiiration.

Heimingway's other books do not stir up my mind like The Old Man and Sea. It seems that his other novels are all of the same kind of construction and style. His novels describe bigger events and stories at very personal level in great details of the daily activities of the protagnists. The Snows at Mount Kalimanjaro, Farewell to Arms, The Sun Also Rises, For Whom the Bells Toll and many other novels are all alike in this respect.

I think I am more interested in stories than the literary skills. I like stories that sound "real", even fictions. May be that's because I intermix my readings with biographies and fictions. If a book doesn't tell a moving story then I cannot keep my concentration. I keep look for dramatic changes. But most of Heimingway's and Fitzgerald's stories are fairly predictable. These are "pure" literature exercises that are like Chopin's recitals, hard and artsy, and more appreciated by those who love the style, like sipping a cup of well made coffee, one drip at a time.
 

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• Very well said! Thank you so much bmdn for your inputs. -京燕花园- ♀ (769 bytes) () 05/24/2013 postreply 14:27:44