Summer Reading

To kick off my summer reading for this year, I decided it was time for me to reread Gone With the Wind. I've been reading Pat Conroy's reading memoir My Reading Life, and he devotes an entire chapter to GWTW and what an amazing book it is. This, along with going to see The Conspirator, gave me the nudge I needed to give GWTW, all 1448 pages of it, its second read. I've been wanting to read it again for a while, but the fact that I lost my original copy during one of my 4 moves in the past 3 years was holding me back. I got my first copy at this tiny English bookstore in St. Petersburg and stayed up all night reading it on the night train back to Moscow. I then devoted all my metro rides for a week or so to it. My first copy traveled all over Russia with me, so it had a special place in my heart. I've been in denial that I lost it and have been refusing to get another copy, but Sunday I broke down and got a new one. I started rereading it on Monday (and all my students are freaked out by its massive size...and even more freaked when I tell them this is the second time I'm reading it).

The beginning of this book makes me think that I was perhaps born at the wrong time. I think part of me was meant to live on an antebellum plantation, wearing hoop skirts and sitting on my big front porch while boys came calling. Then, I would have gotten married and just had to sit in a chair and look pretty. I mean, what girl wouldn't kind of want to live in a time characterized by "exaggerated courtesy to women"?

It also makes me want to give any kid I may have in the future some incredibly Southern name like Cade, Raiford, or Wilkes. (I mean, Cade Calvert, I love it.)

And the beginning makes me kind of sad that life's not like that anymore. Then I remember the whole slavery thing and feel like a really bad person.

Anyway, I highly recommend the book. You just have to get past the length, which even I admit is a little intimidating at first. But I promise, it's totally worth it. And don't think you can just watch the movie because they leave out TONS of great stuff, including one particularly charming scene involving Scarlett, Rhett, and a horse-and-buggy.