#38 Read Gone With the Wind

Well, I did it!  I finally finished Gone with the Wind.  It was really hard for me to get into this book and as a result I was reading it on and off since about the first of the year.  Actually I was about 17 pages in at some point before Christmas, but returned it to the library because I started reading something else.  That is something I NEVER do, so you have to realize just how hard it was for me to get into this book!  

I just hated Scarlett and I can't take it when authors go on for paragraphs and pages with descriptions of land and other boring things.  And that's exactly what Margaret Mitchell does in the beginning of the novel.  And then she picked a completely unlikeable heroine which is really gutsy but didn't make starting this book any easier.  It took me around 300 pages or something like that to really get into the book.  I think when Rhett Butler first appeared I began to like it.  I kept thinking to myself, why does everyone love this book?!  It's so boring and reading the black vernacular was KILLING me!  I couldn't even figure out what they were saying half the time.  Plus, I would only read at home because I wasn't about to drag around a thousand plus page book around with me everywhere.  

Anyway...with all that said, I'm really glad that I read this book!  I kept thinking about Scarlett and Rhett when I wasn't reading and even after I was finished reading.  This is really amazing historical fiction.  You really got a sense of what life was like during the Civil War and Reconstruction.  I loved the characters and the character development.  I especially came to love Rhett, Melanie and Mammy.  

As I was finishing this book, I thought to myself, there's no way she's going to be able to wind this book up.  How will she do it?  No, this can't really be the end.  But it was.  And she finished it in the perfect way too.  So I was actually pleased with the ending.  I can't wait to watch the movie now!