Wednesday, March 26, 2008

This Side of Paradise

My book club met yesterday to talk about our second book, "This Side of Paradise." I had to make a monumental effort, even for me, to finish it, since I started it Monday night and had only read 53 pages (of 282) by the time I left work yesterday afternoon. So I read like mad and finished it in time for the meeting. I reviewed it on GoodReads, so I won't belabor my review here, but I wanted to pull out one of the exceptional quotes from it. (There were quite a few, but this one is the most alluring.) I'm filled with dreams of floating this week... only a few more days until I'll be floating myself in the ocean.

Often they swam and as Amory floated lazily in the water he shut his mind to all thoughts except those of hazy soap-bubble lands where the sun splattered through wind-drunk trees. How could anyone possibly think or worry, or do anything except splash and dive and loll there on the edge of time while the flower months failed. Let the days move over - sadness and memory and pain recurred outside, and here, once more, before he went on to meet them he wanted to drift and be young.

--F. Scott Fitzgerald

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

My book group is derailing.

Casey said...

I hated the book so much, I didn't read the last page. I think I really made my point.

My book group is awful. Only my mom and I ever read the book, and then all we do (IF we can ever agree on a time to meet) is get drunk...

Emily said...

We have a pretty good 2/3 of the group who has read the book each month. But we don't get drunk enough. it's really a shame.

D said...

I don't have a book group