The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

I'm sorry. I couldn't help but think of Andy Kaufmann when reading the opening paragraph of this Great American Novel. The one everyone gets stuck reading in high school along with the Scarlet Letter and Huckleberry Finn.
But this book is more than that.
A good friend of mine who's a fellow bookworm bequeathed me this book along with several others that she just simply couldn't take with her. My sister saw this book and asked me what it was about. She couldn't remember it from High School. And with a great deal of embarrassment, I had to confess that all I remembered was the optomotrist billboard with those great big eyes and that someone dies.
Actually, three people die. But I won't ruin it for you.
It's actually a very sad book. A sort of essay on estranged rich people and how truly lonely they are. It puts me in the mind of a Kids in the Hall Skit where Dave Foley is the apologetic Dr. who was nothing more than Mr. Congeniality in High School, but some how made his way to the top.
"I thought to myself, 'How far can a guy get on charm?' Pretty far, actually."
As lonely as he is, Jay Gatsby's got charm. And just enough mystique about him to make him a lantern in a closet full of moths.

This book is also about the girl that got away. Daisy. Poor, poor Daisy. She was sweet and came off as a flighty little butterfly. And oh how Jay wanted to be her flower. Sadly enough, Jay thought the way to be chosen for the part of "Flower" was to impress the bejesus out of Daisy. To have the most magnificent and opulent home anyone has ever seen. The more money spent, the better.

It's a sad story, really. It's one of those 'Waiting in the Car' books, because it is such a quick read. It speaks truths. Simple truths, but truths no less. It's like the Beatles once said, You can't buy me love.

Abarat by Clive Barker

Children's literature is a curious thing. There's a fine balance--You can't get too deep/brainy or you leave the kids in the murk. But you can't sound patronizing, either.
Clive Barker masters this balance, proving that he can do more than just horror. The style is unmistakably Clive's as is the plot and setting. It's really not that much different from his other books save the plot's been cleaned up a bit.(People who've read Clive Barker are aware of the sexual content in a lot of his books)

We have Candy Quackenbush, the quintessential outsider living in a town as plain and boring as the ones most of us live in. This only serves to encourage the desire to see Candy find happiness elsewhere.
Enter Abarat. Abarat is a collection of islands where each represents an hour and these islands are that hour all the time. So you could conceivably have it be noon your whole life. What's interesting about this is the antagonist, Christopher Carrion. He was in love with the late Princess Boa, who represents light and he'd promised her that if they married they could change the world. Carrion is the Lord of Midnight, and when you stop to think about it, Midnight is not only the end of the day, but also the start of the next day. I smell a paper here.

The artwork in this book is also fabulous. I think what captivated me most about it was that Clive was able to combine his two creative skills into one piece. It was interesting to be reading his description of John Mischeif and all his brothers living on his antlers and then to see a painting of Mischeif. Usually, someone else illustrates a kids' book and it's their interpretation and so you're left to wonder if that's the image the writer had truly intended.(At least that's what goes through my mind, but then I'm a writer myself.) But these paintings were by the author himself just as he'd intended it. The art (as you can see from the cover) is bright and dynamic. The shapes and colors seem very deliberate. The brightness of these pieces seem to fit the type of story this is almost perfectly. But there again, both creations come from the same person, so we're getting Clive's entire vision without any misleading interpretations.

Not only does this book make the balance between simplicity and condescention, but it's also written in such a way that older folk like myself can enjoy it without having to shift our mind-set. Well done, Mr. Barker.