Fitzgerald

The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald
$40.00
Loved the short stories from beginning to end. It's a book that you'll not want to stop reading. The verbiage is very easy and flows like the river as you read through his works. You'll finish this book in no time. The end result will be an experience with one of our country's greatest authors to ever grace a blank sheet of paper. Enjoy and read more FSF if this is your first taste of him!

The Great Gatsby
$14.00
not sure what or which is the more / most vacuous . . . the characters, the style, the plot or the writer himself. save yourself some time and watch ants crawl around or contemplate the ceiling fan. Overwrought, overwritten. At some point, you gotta care about the author or the events or at least one of the characters, for God's sake. This stuff is dated today and I think at the time it was trite and tripe, both. Like the Emperor's New Clothes, someone ought to speak the truth about this boring piece which is, most decidedly, not a great work of art.

This Side of Paradise (Vintage Classics)
$9.00
Published in 1920, F. Scott Fitzgerald's first novel was wildly controversial, critically lauded, and an instant bestseller. Read today, it may be difficult to understand why; the story is a highly episodic "bildungroman" of a pampered, arrogant young man as he drifts with noticeable lack of appreciation through corridors of power and pleasure without absorbing much in the way of insight. But it is precisely because of that THIS SIDE OF PARADISE was felt to be such a shocker in its era: the very notion that any one would write a novel about such a slacker was controversial and new. Amory Blaine is among the first "anti-heroes" of the 20th Century, the opening salvo in a literary tradition that would eventually encompass everything from CATCHER IN THE RYE to ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST to CATCH-22.

In addition to its unexpected apathy, PARADISE was also considered shocking for its portrait of women. Certainly many writers, including numerous female authors, had written about women intelligently--but Fitzgerald stands astride the shift between what was and what is. A society belle of earlier generations would never admit to having been kissed before marriage; the "popular daughter" of the 1910s was not only kissed, she actively connived at it, and she didn't mind talking about it afterward. Fitzgerald's portraits of these seemingly new creatures, who had money and social background, who stayed out late and necked in strange apartments, and who didn't seem to give a damn about what people of thought of them, is at once tender and icy cold. To say that the portrait horrified the parents of teenage girls from New York to California would be a significant understatement.

At the time of its publication, THIS SIDE OF PARADISE was considered "an experimental novel," largely because Fitzgerald shifts between several different narrative styles as the book progresses. At the time it seemed very fresh and new, but in truth the effect was not so much designed as accidental: the novel was cobbled together from Fitzgerald's earlier, unpublished writings, and the contrasts and shifts that seemed fresh and new in 1920 quickly came to feel uneven afterward. Fitzgerald never made the same mistake. His later works would be planned, written and re-written, and polished to an almost superhuman degree. But in spite of the book's uneven narrative, it is very much what we think of when we think of Fitzgerald as a writer: sparks of poetry illuminating the psychology of slightly uncertain, often dubious characters, all interwoven with the hazards of careless wealth and incautious romance. Critics of the day hailed him as a major new talent, and his major works continue to stand the test of time.

Like most of Fitzgerald's novels, PARADISE is distinctly autobiographical in nature. The novel begins with a portrait Amory as a child, son of a non-descript father and the fabulously wealthy, wildly pretentious, and ridiculously eccentric Beatrice--whose influence is one of self-indulgent ennui. In a fit of social ambition, Amory decides to depart from his mother's pseudo-intellectualism and European pretensions and "go to school," enduring an unpleasant stint at an eastern prep school before entering Princeton. But although he rejects his mother's way of life, he is still very much her child; he is a superficial student at best, and he drifts through everything from superficial romances to philosophy class to The Great War without seeming to profit from the experience. An arrogant slacker, he arrives at the end of the novel to find himself without any personal resources, either tangible or internal. What is the point? In forcing the reader to that question, Fitzgerald effectively summed up the attitude of an entire generation. What was it all for? Why do we bother? Perhaps the best any of us can hope is a little comfort here and there and a good time along the way. It was an attitude that marked the beginning of the 1920s roar.

The novel is particularly distinguished by a sense of irony. Amory may not be a likeable person, but the follies of youth--most particularly its pretensions--have not changed significantly over years, and Fitzgerald plays them out with a dry sense of humor that makes the careful reader wince time and again. Amory is indeed insufferable, but so have most of us been at one time or another, and the effect is comic, embarrasing, ridiculous, and at times down right painful. It is also particularly memorable, as many have pointed out, for its brilliant portrait of Princeton during the 1910s; indeed, the school becomes a major character in the novel, and while Amory develops a romantic appreciation of it, his great failure is that he never bothers to scratch the romantic surface in search of the core values that support it. It is, as Fitzgerald himself might have said, the curse of the mother visited on the son, a wallow in luxury without an appreciation for the hard work that supports it.

THIS SIDE OF PARADISE is not really much read these days, and on the occasions that is read, it is usually read by those who are already fans of later Fitzgerald works such as THE GREAT GATSBY and TENDER IS THE NIGHT. It may well be that it is best left to such; I find it hard to believe that the typical reader, if there is such a thing, will be able to grasp what made it so unexpected in 1920. I do recommend it, flawed though it is, but this is really a novel that for all its beauties is probably best left to hardcore fans.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

Nurse Practitioner Certification Examination And Practice Preparation
$53.95
I highly recommend this book for all who are interested in studying for the certification exam for nurse practitioners.