The Great Gatsby

I didn't read this when it was assigned in 11th grade English, too preoccupied with how “smart” I was for managing to get by in grade school while not doing the work. In college I read Tender is the Night and enjoyed it and still never picked up Gatsby, while knowing the story. Now at age 30, Nick's age in 1922, I went on a hike in Virginia and decided to take along a book that would not weigh very much. I'm impressed by how much it diverged from how much I “knew” about it from class discussion, plot summaries, and friends' descriptions of seeing the Luhrmann film.