Two thumbs up for today's guest blogger!

I've never had too much to say about Roger Ebert's opinion -- way back when, I seem to recall being more in tune with Gene Siskel's movie reviews -- but I'm a big fan of his take on a dumbed-down Great Gatsby.  A later clarification suggested the book in question was written for ESL students, but even then, why on earth would you desecrate the text of Gatsby so foreign-language students could read it?  Write your own simplified stories for lesson purposes -- I remember a lot of lame anecdotes about Pierre LeGrand and Yvette LeBeau when I was taking French -- and read the novel in translation until you're fluent enough to read the original.