WWW. WEDNESDAY asks three questions to prompt you to speak bookishly. To participate, and to see how other book lovers responded, click here.
PS I no longer participate in WWW.WEDNESDAY via that link because her blog won't accept Blogger comments. I mention this only to save you the frustration I experienced trying to link up.
1. What are you currently reading? We Are Too Many by Hannah Pittard. I thought that after spending 1,000 pages with a book written in the 20th century about life and love in the 19th century, it would do me good to read some contemporary non-fiction. This book is so very different from GWTW that I almost got the bends.
This memoir is heavily dialog-driven and often reads like a play without stage direction. Hannah and Patrick (not his real name) fall in love, get married, fall out of love, and their marriage blows up when he has an affair. As she tells her (mostly) true story, she is honest about her responsibility for the deterioration of the relationship even before the affair. But I'm only about a quarter of the way in and I'm not yet sure if I like her. I hope I become fond of her because it will make the book resonate more. I definitely like Elmer, the couple's dog. He is a good boy.
2. What did you recently finish reading? Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. I spent a month with the denizens of The County and Atlanta and now that it's over, I miss them. Scarlett -- brave, vain, stubborn and strong -- and her country neighbors. Melanie -- honest, decent, just as brave but never as strong -- and the townfolk. It struck me as a I reread this book (possibly my tenth time through, though the first time in at least a decade) that the male characters are all really in service of the females. I paid closer attention this time to Scarlett's Robillard relatives, especially the backstory of her mother, Ellen. In her way and in her time, Ellen was just as passionate as her daughter, though had Scarlett known she never would believed it.
I remain in love with Rhett Butler. My friend Elaine has also read the novel and seen the movie (multiple times) and insists whole heartedly she would be happier with Ashley Wilkes. Whatever. Rhett was hot. Not just because of his tan, hairy chest and strong arms. (Though they help.) I think it would be wonderful to find a man who knows me, understands me, and still loves me.
But, as I've said before, this book so very, very disturbing. The false equivalency between The Union and The Confederacy, the justification of slavery, the celebration of The Ku Klux Klan. Of course I cringed and winced. Still, I think it's important to remember that Scarlett felt this way in the 1800s, Margaret Mitchell obviously agreed in the 1900s, and unfortunately, some of our citizens find all this defensible in the new millennium. As much as the storytelling, that makes GWTW worth reading.
