Bookworm: I Just Finished… (April 2015)

I didn't read as much as I hoped to this month, but I did reread an old favorite and finish a title that has been getting a lot of buzz…

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

This was my favorite read in high school. I remember being drawn to the grandeur and glitz of Gatsby’s parties and how they were permeated by the loneliness and fraud of the characters. I felt like it mimicked the way I felt like I fit in, yet didn’t in high school. Curious to know if the novel would affect me differently given that my vantage point has changed over the past 15 years, I wasn’t surprised to find it had. I was still enamored by Gatsby’s parties, but they felt more superficial. I was also still intrigued by the characters, but their shallowness felt more real to me. I think every American should read this book simply because it characterizes the beginning of the modern age and serves as a representation, although of a minute population, of New York in the 1920s.

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

Even though it has become a pretty talked about book, I first heard about The Girl on the Train from my mother. She, like many others, likened it to Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, which I read and enjoyed. I felt like it held up to the hype. I was hooked from the beginning. The book alternates between the perspectives of three women-- Rachel, a divorced alcoholic, who has resorted to riding the train for kicks; Megan, a housewife who seemingly has it all and has become an object of fixation for Rachel, as you can see her house from the train; and Anna, the wife of Rachel’s ex-husband, Tom, who is tired of Rachel’s drunken invasions upon their privacy. The plot centers around the disappearance of Megan and the connection between the three women. The differing points of view were well woven, and I actually preferred this novel to Gone Girl because it was more neatly wrapped up in the end. Still, it’s bound to shock and keep readers on the edge of their seats.