The Sun Also Rises: The Hemingway Library Edition

You know what’s the trouble with you? You’re an expatriate. One of the worst type. Haven’t you heard that? Nobody that ever left their own country ever wrote anything worth printing. Not even in the newspapers.

I re-read this for the first time since high school. Characters are constantly drunk and belligerent, arguing over a girl who is just as annoying. There is a fiesta. Bullfights and fights occur. Jake Barnes has a lot of ruminating thoughts. Sometimes they are interesting and sometimes they aren’t. The style is laconic but still manages to bore me to tears. Last part gets a little more interesting but then abruptly ends. Oh well, I am glad to be done. I agree with my past self: this book is a dud, despite the interesting subject matter and environs described. One star for the barest sympathies of what the Lost Generation was like, and half a star for the brevity of the book. Minus a million stars for my utter boredom and desire to DNF, were it not for the book count and a book club prompt. This book may have been exciting and groundbreaking once, but that time has passed.‘Favorite’ quotes:※ ‘“Everybody behaves badly,” I said.’※ ‘There was a waiter sitting at one of the tables with his head in his hands.’※ ‘It was beginning to get dark. The fiesta was going on. I began to feel drunk but I did not feel any better.’