Week 15/52: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald [and a lot of other random book stuff]

I haven't read The Great Gatsby since I was a junior in high school (um, 1995?). Rereading Gatsby was pleasurable yet strange. I remembered so much. Partly because we dissected it to death: the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleberg have never felt far away but partly Gatsby strikes a nerve in the young. In contemplating grown-up life, you hope that someone comes to your funeral. You hope your books don't go unread. You hope your dreams don't implode. You hope you don't surround yourself with careless people. Reading Gatsby again is not a polemic as it was as in adolescence but just a tragedy. I have already made the big choices.  And I want to adopt Tom & Daisy's little girl. I certainly never gave her a second thought in high school.

I love the famous cover art of The Great Gatsby and I almost ordered this t-shirt from Out of Print (cool company: for every shirt they sell they donate a book to Africa). But then I thought: do I really want to spend $28 to have a pair of eyes on my chest? 

So I may have just ordered this bookend instead [from CB2]

And maybe the $20 edition of this print by Tatsuro Kiuchi from 20×200. I am slowly collecting a few things here and there for the closet in our bedroom that will eventually be my home office (once I start working again – hopefully this summer or fall?).