Book #21: Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

I've been wanting to read this book for AGES. I stole it from my parents' house probably three or four years ago and never actually got around to reading it until this week. I can't believe I waited this long!

The main reason I shied away from it for so long was because of its bulk, of course. It's over 1,000 pages. But it took me fewer days to read this one than Connecticut Yankee did, because I was SO much more interested in this one. I started it on Wednesday and have spent a few hours reading each day since then.

First off, I loved it. The story is awesome. I've seen the movie once, and it pretty much includes EVERYTHING from the book. But the background and internal conflict/thoughts you get in the book is SO much more involving than in the movie. I still did not like Scarlett, at all, even after reading the book, but you can't help being fascinated with her and rooting for her, even as you hate her. (Except for the whole Ashley situation--that just MAKES ME SO MAD.) I love how Mitchell really creates the world of the Southerners and helps you to understand where they were coming from, how they felt about the war, and all that stuff. It's all so foreign and old-fashioned to us, but I felt like she did an excellent job of getting the reader into that.

As a part of that, it's so interesting how the book is so not-self-conscious about the racism and sexism in it, since it was written in the 1930s. The freed slaves in Georgia are really seen as a totally different species, almost. And Mitchell definitely portrays the institution of slavery (and the whole Southern culture) as being so romantic and perfect. All the slaveowners love their slaves and treat them like family, which is so counter to usual slavery portrayals you read in books.

I really did get into the whole book. I kept explaining how interesting it all was to Tommy and talking about parts of the book with him all weekend long. I just cannot get over HOW much I hate Scarlett for trying to steal Ashley from Melanie all the time, and how obnoxious it is that Melanie never believes that Scarlett's trying to do it. And there are ALWAYS people telling Scarlett how lame Ashley is or how dissimilar they are, and she just always replies with, "You don't know anything about him! You aren't worth to wipe his shoes!" and it's SO OBVIOUS that she's stupidly wrong. But it's still awful at the end that Rhett leaves her--you want her to be happy with him because that's what HE'S wanted all along. But I'm still glad he leaves--she needs to be taught a lesson. I think in the END they should get back together, though. In a decade or so.

Also, I wonder if they re-made the movie nowadays, how it would be different. What parts of the book would they leave out? Because they didn't leave ANYTHING out of the book for the 1939 movie--the entire plot is in there. They would never do that in Hollywood today. I'm really interested to see what stuff they would leave out and include--but I don't know if they'll ever re-make it, since it's still the most popular movie of all time.

Book #20: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain

I had to read this when I was in seventh grade English, along with Beowulf and Travels with Charley. And I HATED IT--hated ALL OF THEM with a ferocious hatred that only a seventh-grader is capable of. I thought they were all the worst things ever written and refused to enjoy them in any way. But I saw this old, beat-up copy at my favorite used bookstore in Raleigh when I was there procrastinating the other day and bought it for ten cents. I figured it was worth a dime to figure out if it was THAT BAD or not.

It took me FOREVER to read this tiny little book. (I guess it's not that tiny, but the copy I have is one of those small classics.) I was reading only when I exercised, and I guess that says something--that I was never excited about it enough that I wanted to read it when I wasn't exercising. The book itself was actually really good--Twain's irony and sarcasm is awesome, of course, and I found myself laughing at parts throughout--but I never REALLY got into it too much. The plot isn't really the main point of the story--it's the commentary you get through Hank Morgan's head about Camelot and the improvements he's making, etc. So I think Twain did a good job, but I was kind of glad it wasn't any longer. I even ended up skimming through the last few chapters because I was feeling ready to be done, and I knew exactly what was going to happen.

Books #17, 18, and 19: The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins

I kind of feel like it's cheating to add these books to my list, since I've read them each two (or three?) times before and because they only take me about 3 hours to read. I started the first one yesterday at around 4:00, and I just finished the last one. Yeah, I know. You'd think I'd have more to do than read The Hunger Games all over again--I am graduating soon and have to write my capstone and all--but we went to see the movie on Saturday and I couldn't stop thinking about it, so I went with it.

I will not say that The Hunger Games are even close to HP--don't even try and say that. But they're really fun and addicting reads because they are so EXTREMELY plot-driven, which also allows me to plow through them at the speed of light. I just can't get over some of the annoying things Suzanne Collins does as she writes--she's a great storyteller, but I would not say she's a great writer. Her prose is not smooth enough for me to fall in love with, even though it's distracting enough--that's about as concise as I can get it. Obviously I like the books though, since I've now read them three times each (or four?) and don't mind it a bit.

One thing: Suzanne Collins is AWFUL at dealing with endings. The ending of the series--the epilogue--is so anticlimactic it drives me crazy. The conversation Katniss and Peeta have at the end of the first Hunger Games when he finds out she was just acting the whole time lasts like ONE PAGE. How was there not more that went into that? That drove me crazy.

Sidenote: There are lots of obnoxious comma splices in her writing. Learn to use a dash and semicolon, lady! Also, I hate it when she does this thing where she doesn't follow a quote with the proper punctuation:

"Oh" is all that comes out of my mouth.

It looks SO WRONG AND IT DRIVES ME CRAZY!

Book #16: Bound on Earth by Angela Hallstrom

I bought this book around six months ago. I was really excited to read it when I got it, but I never got around to it--it sat on my bookshelf staring at me, and I avoided it. I was nervous to read it, scared of it.

It's a book about Mormon families, a specific Mormon family, and their trials and how they get through them and how those trials test their limits and their family ties. It feels like it's about me, my family, our extended family, right now. With most books, there's a disconnect, because even when I relate to the characters and connect to their experiences I can always separate myself--they don't really know me or have that many similarities to me. But this book did. And it scared me before I read it (and even after getting through the first few chapters) because it felt like their trials were going to be my trials, or at least our family's trials.

But that's just a sign of how good of a book it really is, right? I felt connected to it, even though I didn't even want to. Hallstrom really knew what she was writing about. And the book ends with the feeling that, no matter how difficult we families are here on earth, they are worth it. So it really makes you feel good, along with all those struggles.

Book #15: Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott

(Okay, the image is of the movie version of Ivanhoe, but I liked it so much better than the boring Barnes and Noble cover that I was reading from.)

Ivanhoe is one of those books I'd always heard of but had ABSOLUTELY no idea what it was about. I probably couldn't have told you who it was by, even. But Tommy got it for Christmas (or something?) a while ago and he loved it--he's all about the Robin Hood/Three Musketeers/fighting stories, and this book fits right in with those. He loved it, which gave me some motivation to read it. But I mean, WHO KNEW that Ivanhoe was about medieval times? Even once I eventually learned who it was by, I still figured it was contemporary with Walter Scott.

All in all, the book was great. A good example of that genre of medieval knights, damsels in distress, burning castles, and a healthy dose of anti-Semitism (to be fair, I think Scott was making a commentary on contemporary anti-Semitism, not actually being anti-Semitic, but it was pretty rampant). I just couldn't help cracking up at all the times the strong, chivalrous knights fell madly in love with the perfectly formed maidens. And I could NOT believe how long the castle/prisoner scene in the middle was. But learning about all of the Norman-Saxon issues was really interesting--a part of history I frankly don't know anything about--and I loved Robin Hood and his merry men throughout the novel. And I love Richard the Lion-hearted!

Book #14: State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

I love when I read books that have an intriguing storyline; who doesn't? But I love it even more when the book sounds as beautiful as the plot does. The language and writing style in State of Wonder really fit my ideal of beautiful writing, and that made me love the book from the moment I first popped the CD into my car.

In this book, Marina Singh, a pharmacologist from Minnesota, has to travel down to the Amazon to track down a very uncommunicative researcher who is working for her company. But she's going down there after her friend and co-worker, who went before her, dies down there. It's a very traumatic-sounding story, and you get thrust into the action right from the very beginning. Once Marina gets down to Brazil, the plot slows down--but Patchett describes everything so well and so beautifully that it doesn't really bother me.

Two things that I was not a huge fan of: I don't know how believable the "drug" was that they were working on down in the Amazon (they supposedly found a tree that allowed women to remain fertile forever), and I hated the ending. I won't tell you what it was, but it made me really mad. But the rest of the book was good enough that I would still recommend it, up to that point.

Book #13: Pardonable Lies by Jacqueline Winspear

I'm the type of person who has to follow through on things, once I've started them. (Usually, high school basketball notwithstanding.) This Maisie Dobbs series is one of those things I'm intending to follow through on. This is the third book in the series and I liked it just as much as the first two--Maisie is an interesting protagonist to follow, and the mysteries are really fun to follow as well. I do tend to question all of the incredible coincidences that happen in her mysteries--in this one, she's working on two unrelated cases, searching for missing people, and they turn out to have been working together, so she solves both cases at the same time. I do NOT believe that is realistic--just because they were both soldiers serving in WWI together does not mean that they knew each other. Maisie even talks about coincidences as she works, saying that there's no such thing and every "coincidence" is meaningful--but this kind of seemed like it was too easy of a solution. But I still got into the story!