The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel by American writer F. Scott
Fitzgerald. Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, near New York City, the
novel depicts first-person narrator Nick Carraway's interactions with
mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and Gatsby's obsession with his former
lover, Daisy Buchanan. The book was inspired by a youthful romance
Fitzgerald had with socialite Ginevra King, and the riotous parties he
attended on Long Island's North Shore in 1922. The Great Gatsby received
favorable reviews but was a commercial disappointment, selling fewer
than 20,000 copies in the first six months. At the time of the author's
death in 1940, he believed himself to be a failure and his work
forgotten. During World War II, the novel surged in popularity when the
Council on Books in Wartime distributed free copies to American soldiers
serving overseas. This newfound popularity launched a critical re-
examination, and now the book is widely considered to be a literary
masterwork.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Gatsby>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1718:
The pirate Blackbeard was killed in battle by a boarding party
of British sailors off the coast of North Carolina.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackbeard>
1908:
The Congress of Manastir standardized the Albanian alphabet, a
date commemorated as Alphabet Day in Albania, Kosovo and North
Macedonia.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_of_Manastir>
1928:
Boléro, French composer Maurice Ravel's most famous musical
composition, premiered at the Paris Opéra.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bol%C3%A9ro>
1971:
In Britain's worst mountaineering tragedy, the Cairngorm
Plateau disaster, five teenage students and one of their leaders were
found dead from exposure in the Scottish Highlands.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairngorm_Plateau_disaster>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
grace note:
1. (music) A musical note, indicated on a score in smaller type with or
without a slash through it, played to ornament the melody rather than as
part of it. Its note value does not count as part of the total time
value of the measure it appears in.
2. (figuratively) Something that decorates, embellishes, or ornaments; a
finishing touch.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/grace_note>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
What another would have done as well as you, do not do it. What
another would have said as well as you, do not say it; what another
would have written as well, do not write it. Be faithful to that which
exists nowhere but in yourself — and thus make yourself indispensable.
--André Gide
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Gide>
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