The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

I'd wanted to read this book since I first saw the ad for the movie that came out earlier this year with Leonardo DiCaprio.  But just never got around to it.  Plus, I'd also decided lately not to read books right before the movies, just because I'd been disappointed so often, e.g. The Hunger Games movie.  I know many people probably read this at some point in school, but it was not one that I ever read, so my sister ended up buying it, and then she sent it to me to read.  Honestly I can say that the movie was pretty much identical to the book.  As I read the book, I was like, yeah, nothing new, this happened like this in the movie, and so on.  Oh yeah, there were a few differences, like his dad at the end of the book, but not the movie for example.  But pretty much it was like the actually made the movie straight from the book.  The scene in the movie where he Gatsby is taking his fancy shirts out of his drawers and closets and then throwing them at Daisy and the narrator of the story, Nick, I figured that must be something to give the movie a more dramatic scene, but no, that was actually in the book.
I don't know if I should actually tell you the story, like I kind of do on my other reviews, since this is a classic.  Basically, Nick moves to New York, into a tiny little cottage that is next to a huge, elaborate mansion.  Nick's second cousin, or some sort of relation, named Daisy, and her husband Tom who Nick knew in college, live across the bay from him in a fancy house.  The big mansion next to Nick's cottage is owned by a man named Gatsby that no one seems to really know much about.  And every weekend Gatsby throws huge parties that people from all over come to, even without being invited, they just show up!  Turns out that Gatsby once knew Daisy and was in love with her, and she with him so it seemed.  But at the time he was too poor to marry her, as she came from a well to do family.  But now he has made his fortune, and has come back to try to win her back. Even though she is married and has a child, he is convinced that once she sees him and what he now has to offer, she will come back.  Of course there is all kind of drama and things don't go the way they are supposed to.  A kind of tragic love story I guess.
Not a bad book.  But I'd definitely recommend just seeing the movie if you're going to do one of the two.  And if you're going to do both, probably seeing the movie first will help you get through the book with its style of writing a bit easier.