The Great Gatsby

If you get the ambition to pick up a classic this winter, I'm all for it. And if you're diligent and ambitious enough to get through Anna Karenina in preparation for or celebration of Keira Knightley's bodice-ripper, well, good luck with the mowing scene.

But not just because Baz Luhrmann's Gatsby will be released this spring, Gatsby is without a doubt the classic you haven't read since high school that is worth your time. You'll read it on a Saturday or in a weekend, and you will finish feeling transcendent.

What a gem this book is.

The plot is sexy (so sexy!), fast-paced, and devastating. The language is incandescent. The characters are beautiful and damned.

And its lasting impression is at once the building and the destruction of our national myth.