I find this book very interesting in that it is a pretty straight-foward ptolemic on how class in the United States functions, or doesn't function, yet the average reader instead uses it as a sort of wish fullfillment for a time were university life was cool! An equivilant would be reading "The Great Gatsby" as a tale of how fun it was partying in the 1920s, which I suppose was Baz Luhrmann's reading...

A lot of great stuff in this, and a lot of very memorable characters. While a common criticism is to write History off as tropey, I would retort that it popularised and invented a lot of the tropes it is criticised for. SPOILERS The twincest probably directly inspired the characters of Cersei and Jamie Lannister for example.