“Now, Puss, tell me true, do you understand his folderol about books and poetry and music and oil paintings and such foolishness?” “Oh, Pa,” cried Scarlett impatiently, “if I married him, I’d change all that!”When I was a teenager, my goal in life was to be Scarlett O’Hara (less the slavery aspects and lack of a moral compass). What’s wrong with being a strong, business-minded, ambitious woman who knows what she wants, someone who can reinvent herself, someone who knows failure but can rebuild f...

Gone with the Wind is a masterpiece of creative writing on every level. In its 1400 pages (or 49 hours on audio) there is not a single wasted line or insignificant moment. From a purely technical perspective, it is awe-inducing how flawlessly Mitchell utilizes characterization, setting, research, conflict, point of view, narrative voice, symbolism, foreshadowing, allusion, and every other literary device in the handbook. Even more amazing, she can juggle all this and deliver a plot that is relen...

Another epic story complete! This was a very good one!I have read a few huge books in my life. Some are a struggle to get through and others are so captivating they read easier than a 300 page novel. Gone With The Wind falls in the "captivating" category. At no point was I bored with the story or wondering if it was ever going to end. I was fully invested every step of the way - invested to the point that my wife was amused that I spent a lot of time talking back to the book or exclaiming when s...

Margaret Mitchell was a racist and in 1936, 70 years after the Civil War, she wrote a thousand-page love letter to racism. If you'd like to hear why slavery was terrific and black people are inferior to whites and they liked being slaves, here is your epic. If that sounds unpleasant, you won't like Gone With the Wind.A non-racist book can have racist characters, and all the characters in this book are racist. Is the book itself necessarily racist? Yes. It has an omniscient narrator, and many lon...

One of my reading themes for 2016 is reading at least ten classic books. It seems only fitting that on the Fourth of July I completed Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind, an epic masterpiece that many view as the definitive great American novel. I feel that the two halves of the book mirror the southern United States before and after the Civil War. The first half of the book occurs primarily at Tara Plantation. We meet our main protagonist Scarlett O'Hara, the belle of the south, who epitomiz...

I’ve said it some time ago: GWTW the novel is like watching the ten hour director’s cut of GWTW the movie! Hell yeah! All the memorable scenes are there, & the spotlit romance is considerably widened in scope, as is the sturdy social studies lesson on the almighty American Civil War. I mean, everyone has the basic idea correct: the South took a tremendous thrashing. But having the loser’s POV take the forefront, even to the extent of exalting the KKK-- this, more than Scarlett O’Hara’s infam...

It takes guts to make your main character spoiled, selfish, and stupid, someone without any redeeming qualities, and write an epic novel about her. But it works for two reasons. First of all you wait for justice to fall its merciless blow with one of the most recognized lines in cinema ("frankly my dear, I don't give a damn"), but you end with a broken and somewhat repentant character and you can't be pitiless. Secondly, if you were going to parallel the beautiful, affluent, lazy, spirited South...

I received my copy of Gone With the Wind in 1991 and never got past the first 50 or 100 pages in any of my annual attempts at this books until 2004, at which point I decided to defeat the book one and for all. I FINALLY FINISHED READING THE DAMN BOOK.I want my time back.There was a reason I never before read past the first 50 or 100 pages - Scarlet is a raging evil snarky miserable bitch and I hate her. None of the other characters were particularly likable - ranging from sniveling, whiny sissie...

So much has been said in praise of this book it feels redundant to add more. In terms of the slave-holding society, the film actually toned-down the pro-South view of Reconstruction (Scarlett's second husband joined the KKK in the book) and Mammy remains probably one of the most fully-developed and likeable African-American characters from 1930 you'll read. Rhett Butler is the consummate alpha male. This book is definitely the timeless classic reputation it has earned, and though at times it see...

I honestly do not know whether to give this book 5 stars for being one of the most completely engrossing, shocking, and emotionally absorbing pieces of literature ever written, or to give it 0 stars for being the most tragic, unendingly upsetting, disturbing book I've ever read. I read the last 50 pages or so literally with my mouth wide open, unable to believe that it was really going to be THAT tragically sad. When I finally finished, I walked downstairs in a daze, handed the book to my husban...