The Great Gatsby has been released and the roaring 1920s are back in fashion in a big way. We have a reading list for you from the lovely people at Kobo
Has Baz Luhrmann stayed true to the book? To find out if he has captured the essence of the novel it might be time to revisit the classic.
Kobo has provided a handful of reads for inspiration and the best bit is you can get them all for under £10.00. All eBooks are available online at www.kobobooks.com and can be read on any mobile, laptop, tablet or eReading device.
FICTION
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Price: 0.98p
The story of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, of lavish parties on Long Island at a time when, The New York Times remarked, “gin was the national drink and sex the national obsession,” it is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s that resonates with the power of myth. A novel of lyrical beauty yet brutal realism, of magic, romance, and mysticism, The Great Gatsby is one of the great classics of twentieth-century literature.
This is the definitive, textually accurate edition of The Great Gatsby, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli and authorised by the estate of F. Scott Fitzgerald.
The Waste Land and other Poems by T.S. Eliot
Price: £4.19
April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain . . . Published in 1922, The Waste Land was the most revolutionary poem of its time, offering a devastating vision of modern civilisation which has lost none of its power as we enter a new century.
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Price: £5.99
Published in 1926 to explosive acclaim, The Sun Also Rises stands as perhaps the most impressive first novel ever written by an American writer. A roman à clef about a group of American and English expatriates on an excursion from Paris’s Left Bank to Pamplona for the July fiesta and its climactic bull fight, a journey from the centre of a civilization spiritually bankrupted by the First World War to a vital, God-haunted world in which faith and honour have yet to lose their currency, the novel captured for the generation that would come to be called “Lost” the spirit of its age, and marked Ernest Hemingway as the preeminent writer of his time.
NON FICTION
Critical Studies: The Great Gatsby by Kathleen Parkinson
Price: £4.99
Kathleen Parkinson places this brilliant and bitter satire on the moral failure of the Jazz Age firmly in the context of Scott Fitzgerald’s life and times. She explores the intricate patterns of the novel, its chronology, locations, imagery and use of colour, and how these contribute to a seamless interplay of social comedy and symbolic landscape. She devotes a perceptive chapter to Fitzgerald’s controversial portrayal of women and goes on to discuss how the central characters, Gatsby and Nick Carraway, embody and confront the dualism inherent in the American dream.
Only Yesterday: An Informal History Of The Nineteen Twenties by Frederick Lewis Allen
Price: £7.91
Hailed as a classic even when it was first published in 1931, Only Yesterday remains one of the most vivid and precise accounts of the volatile stock market and the heady boom years of the 1920’s. A vibrant social history that is unparalleled in scope and accuracy, it artfully depicts the rise of post – World War I prosperity, the catalytic incidents that led to the Crash of 1929, and the devastating economic decline that ensued–all set before a colourful backdrop of flappers, Al Capone, the first radio, and the “scandalous” rise of skirt hemlines. Now, this mesmerizing chronicle is reintroduced to offer readers of today an unforgettable look at one of the most dynamic periods of America’s past.
The Roaring 20’s And The Wall Street Crash by Nick Shepley
Price: £2.27
The Wall Street Crash was an epic failure of the financial system at the start of the 20th Century, but it alone did not cause the Great Depression. This edition of Explaining Modern History looks at the deeper causes of the crisis. Ideal for GCSE and A Level.
This historical book describes Americas entry into the first world war -leaving it the most affluent country the world had ever seen, through the fantasy of American capitalism in the 1920s culminating in an examination of the causes of the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression and finishing with an assessment of the effectiveness of the government’s economic remedies. All whilst busting myths of the crash of 1929, explaining in very clear terms how it actually happened, and drawing enlightening parallels to today’s economic woes.
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