I Heart The Great Gatsby

I think English teachers need a confessional therapy group where they can go and admit into a vow of silence the books they have never read.  I had never read The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald but when I picked it up yesterday I literally could not put it down.  I read it while eating and walking.  It was so delightful and dark all at the same time. 

"She was only extemporizing, but a stirring warmth flowed from her, as if her heart was trying to come out to you concealed in one of those breathless, thrilling words."

"Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crepe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty, but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering."

"He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly.  It was one of thos rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life.  It faced-or seemed to face-the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor.  It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe n yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey."