I'm Currently Reading...Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (Part One)

 This is the version I'm reading.

Currently reading: Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Reason: I've read it before, and I've been wanting to reread it, so I'm completing this read along HERE.

Part One: Reading Gone With the Wind for really the first time since I was 13 has started a nostalgic journey for me.  "Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful..." chapter one begins, and I am instantly transported back to Georgia during 1861.

  Part One introduces us to the main characters - Scarlett O'Hara (the charming, selfish belle of Tara), her sister, her parents Gerald and Ellen, Ashley Wilkes and his wife-to-be Melanie Hamilton, and of course the infamous Rhett Butler.

  Scarlett is apparently still in love with her beau Ashley, who she hears is to be married to his cousin Melanie Hamilton, a Scarlett makes fun of but she is secretly jealous of nonetheless.  She meets Rhett Butler at the Wilkes' cookout and, when Scarlett makes her unladylike declaration of love to Ashley on his engagement day, neither Scarlett nor Ashley noticed Butler had been lying on the couch the whole time.  After Ashley leaves the room, Rhett addresses himself to Scarlett, and she is furious that he knows her secret.  Embarrassed that everyone might know now, Scarlett recklessly accepts a marriage proposal from Melanie's brother Charles.  They're married, and Scarlett is pregnant when their marriage is cut short by the death of Charles in the war.  The O'Haras decide sending Scarlett and her baby Wade to live in Atlanta with Charles' sister Melanie and his Aunt Pittypat Hamilton will the best thing for their daughter.

  It's take me awhile to write this review (because I had so many other blog posts I wanted to do first) so I'm already a fair way into Part 2.  I really had forgotten how much I love GWTW.  It's kind of an easy read, and the story is so intriguing.  I'd forgotten how selfish Scarlett is though - she's a nut!  My favorite chapter out of this part was chapter fifteen.  I love the description:

" It was ten o’clock in the morning. The day was warm for April and the golden sunlight streamed brilliantly into Scarlett’s room through the blue curtains of the wide windows. The cream-colored walls glowed with light and the depths of the mahogany furniture gleamed deep red like wine, while the floor glistened as if it were glass, except where the rag rugs covered it and they were spots of gay color.
  Already summer was in the air, the first hint of Georgia summer when the high tide of spring gives way reluctantly before a fiercer heat. A balmy, soft warmth poured into the room, heavy with velvety smells, redolent of many blossoms, of newly fledged trees and of the moist, freshly turned red earth. Through the window Scarlett could see the bright riot of the twin lanes of daffodils bordering the graveled driveway and the golden masses of yellow jessamine spreading flowery sprangles modestly to the earth like crinolines. The mockingbirds and the jays, engaged in their old feud for possession of the magnolia tree beneath her window, were bickering, the jays strident, acrimonious, the mockers sweet voiced and plaintive.
   Such a glowing morning usually called Scarlett to the window, to lean arms on the broad sill and drink in the scents and sounds of Tara. But, today she had no eye for sun or azure sky beyond a hasty thought, “Thank God, it isn’t raining.” On the bed lay the apple-green, watered-silk ball dress with its festoons of ecru lace, neatly packed in a large cardboard box. It was ready to be carried to Twelve Oaks to be donned before the dancing began, but Scarlett shrugged at the sight of it. If her plans were successful, she would not wear that dress tonight. Long before the ball began, she and Ashley would be on their way to Jonesboro to be married." - Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell.