Gone With the Wind

I wasn't planning on writing a post about my favorite book of all time, but I just read Ms. Jenson's post about To Kill a Mockingbird and felt inspired.

As you can imagine, I've read a lot of books. My mom taught me to read at a very early age, and I was always pretty far ahead of most of my peers (I read The Giver ,a novel that is on the eighth or ninth grade curriculum at my high school, when I was eight, and Great Expectations in sixth grade). I remember a lot of my elementary school teachers being frustrated by the middle of the year because I had already read all of the books in the class's little library. Library time was always my favorite, because the idea of going in and picking out whatever I wanted to read was wonderful to me (the librarian wouldn't let me have Pride and Prejudice until I was in fourth grade, which at the time annoyed me, but looking back was probably a good decision). For years in middle and early high school, I told everyone that I was going to become an English teacher. That plan obviously didn't work out (mostly because I would be frustrated with being around that many teenagers for that many hours per day) but my love of reading never changed. Even now, I don't go anywhere without a book. I check books out of the NYU library to read just for fun all the time, even though there's never a shortage of readings for me to do for class. Reading is relaxing to me, and even now I can't fall asleep without reading something beforehand.

All that being said, my favorite book out of all those I have read is Gone With the Wind. I know it's a very clichéd favorite book, but that doesn't make me love it any less. It's taken me a long time to figure out why I love it so much, and I think I've got a few ideas.

The first is, of course, the love story. Scarlett and Rhett are meant to be together. The reader knows this from the very first time Rhett is introduced. They're both selfish, rude, and uncaring.

They're perfect for each other.

I also like it because it's a real love story. The beauty is in the fact that they don't end up together. When I was younger, I used to get very angry at Rhett for not staying to love Scarlett when she returned to him at the end. But as I've grown up, I've realized that sometimes, no matter what, you can't wait any longer. Rhett had to leave, and I'm glad he did. I don't believe in fairy-tale, Disney endings for real life; Gone With the Wind is much closer to what really happens. And there's no way the story would be as wonderful and as much of a classic as it is today had he stayed. The most famous line from the entire story is Rhett's parting words: "My dear, I don't give a damn." (There is no "frankly" in the novel; that was added for the movie.)

I also have a strangely passionate attachment to my copy of the novel. I bought my own copy after the fourth time I had borrowed it from the public library and the librarian suggested I give someone else a chance. This book has been with me through some of the strangest, toughest, best parts of my life. It's dog-eared, yellowing, and the spine is completely broken, but I know I'll never get rid of it.

Oh, and anyone who knows me knows better than to talk about the travesty that is Scarlett, the so-called "sequel". Shudder.