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The Great Gatsby

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  • The Great Gatsby

  • Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her;

  • If you can bounce high, bounce for her too,

  • Till she cry “Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover,

  • I must have you!”

  • — THOMAS PARKE D'INVILLIERS

  • Chapter 1

  • Nick Carraway

    In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.

    Profile Picture of Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby
  • Profile Picture of Father in The Great Gatsby

    Father

    “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,”

  • Nick Carraway

    he told me,

    Profile Picture of Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby
  • Profile Picture of Father in The Great Gatsby

    Father

    “just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.”

    lawtonsmith

  • Nick Carraway

    He didn't say any more but we've always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that.

    Profile Picture of Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby

  • In consequence I'm inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores.

    Cody S.
    sb3ckthorpe

  • The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men.

  • Nick Carraway

    Most of the confidences were unsought— frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon— for the intimate revelations of young men or at least the terms in which they express them are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions.

    Profile Picture of Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby

  • Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope.

    lawtonsmith

  • I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.

  • Nick Carraway

    And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit.

    Profile Picture of Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby

  • Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes but after a certain point I don't care what it's founded on.

  • When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart.

130 WPM

Welcome to a new way to read!

Regular books are just lines and pages of text but Literal books look like a group chat. This intro will show you how to:

  1. Change and use the 4 different reading modes.
  2. Interact with the book to comment, take notes, and more.

Auto Load

2/7

When you select Auto Load you can set your reading speed (WPM), press play, and read the story as if the book were a group chat happening live.

AI Reader

3/7

Selecting the AI Reader will add AI voices to Auto Load so that you can hear the book read to you while each line of the book loads.

Tap To Load

4/7

If you'd rather control when each line of the book loads select Tap To Load. As you read tap the “Next Message” button to load the next line.

Free Scroll

5/7

Free Scroll mode allows you to do just as the name implies and freely scroll up or down throughout the book. All messages are pre-loaded in this mode.

Reader Tools

6/7

While reading you can tap on a speech bubble to make social comments, write private notes, define words, and translate words or sentences.

Ready to start?

7/7

Ready to get started? Tap start and then the play button to start reading your first Literal book in Auto Load mode.