Friday Feature - "Gone with the Wind"

Friday Feature is where we share books we love that have been out for several years. We don't want these treasures to get lost just because they aren't babies anymore!

Gone with the Wind
By Margaret Mitchell

published first in 1936
960 pages

Margaret Mitchell's epic novel of love and war won the Pulitzer Prize and went on to give rise to two authorized sequels and one of the most popular and celebrated movies of all time.
Many novels have been written about the Civil War and its aftermath. None take us into the burning fields and cities of the American South as Gone With the Wind does, creating haunting scenes and thrilling portraits of characters so vivid that we remember their words and feel their fear and hunger for the rest of our lives.
In the two main characters, the white-shouldered, irresistible Scarlett and the flashy, contemptuous Rhett, Margaret Mitchell not only conveyed a timeless story of survival under the harshest of circumstances, she also created two of the most famous lovers in the English-speaking world since Romeo and Juliet.

***

Every once in a while I read a book that profoundly affects me emotionally or otherwise... this is one of those books. There is a poetry to how Mitchell writes and I loved feeling as though I was there in, what is to me, a foreign land. To have such a self-centered and oblivious and downright calculating herione and then allow us as readers to identify with her on some levels (or at least not hate her) is no easy feat. and if I had to be on a team, no questions, hands down Rhett Butler. Love, love, love this book!

Do not be fooled if you have seen the movie - it is a watered down, and somewhat candy coated version of this story. Yes, the story of Scarlett and Rhett is epic, but not in a Harlequin-hair-blowing-in-the-wind-romance kind of way. It's in a smart, clevery, witty way. This is easily one of my top favorite novels of all time and I highly recommend reading it!

10/10 stars!!!