Ah, The Great Gatsby. Love it or hate it, 2021 will be the year it starts living its best life since it has just entered the public domain. I can't wait to see how various publishers update its tired (if iconic) cover to make it appeal to a broader, younger audience.

With that in mind, the assemblage of a new Book Club Kit seems quite timely. This particular six-page low-frills guide includes:

- Discussion Questions, such as, "Which character strikes you as the most contemporary? The most old fashioned? Why?" (Fairly standard and academic)
- "Love for Gatsby Throughout the Years," which is just a list of quotes from various authors like, "I'm a devoted rereader of The Great Gatsby -- I'm never going to get tired of it" by Ann Patchett. (Not honestly sure how this would help a book club discussion.)
- Fascinating Facts about the novel, e.g. "Fitzgerald's editor Maxwell Perkins also brought Ernest Hemingway to prominence, publishing The Sun Also Rises in 1926." (Not all that fascinating, IMO.)

Ultimately this collection is pretty dry and won't really help a book club host more than a few minutes with Google would. A Great Gatsby meeting/party begs for 1920s theme suggestions, food and recipes, and decor/fashion ideas. If the goal is to capture the interest of potential new readers of the classic, it might help to provide some content that could be a little more accessible and fun for the standard book club reader.

I’ve read The Great Gatsby numerous times and I think this is a fantastic discussion packet! While I’m partial to the original artwork, the newly published editions are gorgeous and the book club kit matches the new aesthetic perfectly. The questions are insightful and go far beyond those I’ve seen in other book club kits. They could honestly be used as book club topics or even essay questions for high schooler’s reading Gatsby for the first time! The questions leave a lot of room for interpretation and are inspiring me to do a another reread of Gatsby sometime soon.

Thank you NetGalley and Penguin Random House for the free review copy!

This will be useful for reading groups and book clubs as The Great Gatsby is a novel we're considering doing a reading series around featuring some of the new Gatsby-related titles coming out this year--thanks to the publisher for making it available!

Pros: I have never read/used a book club kit before, so I was very interested to see what it included. Now that The Great Gatsby is in the public domain, I suspect there will be many retellings of it, often paired with the original. Such a book club guide will come in handy. The discussion questions got me thinking as I read them, and I especially enjoyed the fascinating facts. This guide made me want to reread The Great Gatsby.

Cons: None really. I'm not sure what readers might expect from such a guide, so it's possible they might be looking for more discussion questions. However, ten questions is generally more than sufficient for a book club meeting.