Book-filled day
Two good book-related things about today:
1. Went to Barnes & Noble (walked 30 minutes each way, too, so got some good exercise in!) and bought two new books: Your Roots Are Showing by Elise Chidley and Enna Burning by Shannon Hale. I'm very excited to read them, but I've got a queue forming now. :)
2. Finally finished Tender Is the Night!
Book 7: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night
Beautiful young actress Rosemary Hoyt meets Dick and Nicole Diver while vacationing in the French Riviera, and she is immediately blown away by them and their lifestyle. She is especially attracted to Dick, a talented psychiatrist whose attentive charm soon captures her heart. His magnetism endears him to people wherever he goes, and he and Nicole are widely imagined to be the perfect couple. But the Divers’ life is not as perfect as it seems on the surface, and the interaction between Rosemary, Dick, and Nicole eventually ends in tragedy.
I have to say, this book isn’t one of my favorites. I thought the first section of the book moved very slowly; it was basically all exposition, setting up the puerile love story between Rosemary and Dick. The second part of the book was the most interesting for me, because it told Dick and Nicole’s backstory and developed Dick’s character a lot more. I think the reason I didn’t like this book very much is that none of the characters seemed very sympathetic to me. Rosemary is childish and insignificant, Nicole is irritatingly confused, and Dick is exactly what his name implies. Although Dick’s downfall is supposed to be tragic, I just found it pathetic in the worst sense of the word. Personally, I think The Great Gatsby is much better, in terms of both style and entertainment value.
(Review cross-posted to 50bookchallenge, books, and 100ormorebooks.)