Gone With the Wind

I love to read. I've been known to finish a book within a day or stay up until all hours of the night to finish a good story. I'm not ashamed of this fact. I'm actually rather proud of it, and I hope my children gain my love of the written word. So far, Aidan is showing promise. I believe he pulled every book he owns off of his shelf yesterday to be read to him.

Last night, I pulled an all nighter. I've been reading Gone with the Wind off and on for the past few weeks now. It's a book I've always wanted to read, but had never brought myself around to reading because my sister had told me at one point that it starts slow, and I have a hard time with slow starting books. But let me tell you, once you're in that book, prepare for it to take off. It did for me last night. I stayed up until 3 am to finish it. I just couldn't put it down. I had to know what happened. And now that I do, I don't know how I feel. It definitely didn't end the way I thought it would. I won't spoil the ending here for those of you who don't know the story yet, but I was a little disappointed, but at the same time, the ending made sense due to prior happenings in the story.

The last hour and half of reading was with tears in my eyes and tissues in my hand. (I think I woke Josh up a time or two with my sniffling.) Scarlett O'Hara is a frustrating character. I spent the last half of that book just waiting for her to see that she had all she needed from life, and at the end, when I think, "Thank goodness! She's finally getting her life together," it doesn't happen. And that's the end. No more story.

So then I laid in bed thinking. Thinking about the book. Thinking how the ending got so messed up. Thinking about the things Scarlett could have done different to change the ending. And here I am at almost 4 in the afternoon on the following day still thinking about these things. So I had to write about it, and I like to know other people's opinions of the story. Did you have a love/hate relationship with this book as well?