I'm So Happy for You

I think everyone can relate to this sentiment. Part of the mystique of being a "good friend" sometimes involves grinning and bearing it when your friends make decisions that you don't necessarily approve of, but also don't want to seem like their mothers in flaunting your disapproval. I picked up this book out of a certain identification with the opposite of the situation... have you ever felt that you were finally happy in your life and that your friends who had been there along the way all of a sudden couldn't identify with you anymore? I have.

Truthfully, I didn't gain any great insight into the situation, but this book did for me what many of Emily Giffin's do; it reminds you that this happens to everyone, that what you're feeling is universal and manages to spin it with some humor at the same time. I read it in about two days. Recommend!

I know, I know

I seem to have gone missing. My disclaimer in the "about me" section should take care of explaining that.

In the meantime, I've just started rereading The Great Gatsby for the first time since high school and it seems that I'm already enjoying it infinitely more the second time with 1) more life experience 2) having read more about the book itself 3) the timely cultural relevance of it right now and 4)having read more in general as to make this look like even more of a beautifully-crafter masterpiece.

Here's a favorite passage so far. I'm enchanted.

"We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-colored spaced, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding cake of the ceiling-- and then rippled over the wine-colored rug making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.

The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house."

I've chosen not to include the point at which this passage receives its disenchantment, because we all know this tale of the "wonders" of money and the magic of things really presents them as a facade of yearning for something else. For now, I choose to revel in the delight that is Fitzgerald's description of pretty things :)