True nerds, such as myself, are re-reading The Great Gatsby before the movie comes out. This is partly to refresh my memory, which has faded since I last read it in high school. Also, I am really looking forward to beginning sentences with the phrase, "It was good, but I feel that Baz Luhrmann didn't quite capture...."
Any overachiever worth their salt, however, knows that one text is never enough. There has to be auxiliary reading to add a conceptual framework. (My degree from Columbia is really rearing it's head here...)
Enter Flapper, a book that came out in 2007 and is a cultural history of the flapper. It's required reading for jazz age aficionados such as myself. It also serves as an ad hoc biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald, who at one point was considered the leading authority on the flapper movement, simply because he was the only one writing about them. It's a fun book, but hardly light reading. Be prepared to learn quite a bit about everything from speakeasies to the birth of The New Yorker magazine.
In terms of new releases, Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, chronicles the Lady Fitzgerald's life with F. Scott. It came out in March.
