Gone With the Wind

I am almost 50 years old and have not seen the movie before. I wanted to read the book first and I finally have. This book was wonderful. I don't think I could of appreciated it as much if I had read it as a much younger woman, so I am glad that for many reasons I didn't get the chance to read it until now. I understand why it is such a well known book. It is very well written, and the characters are full and alive. The story is meaningful and engaging. I laughed, bawled, grew frusterated and angry...I was very emotionally involved! The narrator was EXCELLENT.I highly recommend this book and although I know the book version is always much better then the film, I look forward to the movie as well. I will be reading this book again. Something I rarely do.

Wow. Everyone should read this book BUT NOT bc it is a good book. In fact, this may go down as one of the WORST books I have ever read/listened to, (despite the narrator being excellent). By way of background, I never saw the movie, Gone with the Wind. So I thought this was a love story, but I didn’t really know what it was about. I just knew it was a classic, a well-loved story. So I quickly chose it as my VIP freebie selection of the month. And now that I’ve read it, once again, I say… wow. I realize this book was written in the 1930s. But please do not ask me to give it a pass because “it was a different time.” Look it up for yourself- apparently this book was second only to the Bible in popularity in 1990s. Yes, the actual 1990s (the days when Full House and Friends were popular on television). THIS BOOK. This racist, propaganda-laced book depicting black people as ignorant foolish children who loved being slaves, and the KKK as sympathetic heroes who were just trying to protect their vulnerable white women from violence (ironic) at the hands of black people and their “white trash” “yankee” supporters. Everyone should read this book. And THEN, we should all ask ourselves some very serious questions about why a book like this was still so beloved by so many people up and into the 1990s. Because I will tell you this, it is NOT owing to an interesting plot or exceptional writing. I’m being generous when I say both were, “meh.” But there IS a reason why so many people loved this book. And frankly, my dears, it’s time we all start giving “a damn” as to why. Negative one star. But don’t burn books. Read this for an education.

This story is epic and the narrator was perfect.

The narrator was amazing and made the book so easy to dive into! Beautiful, timeless story.

It is good

A very long listen but so much better than the movie (as always).

I most be the only person in the world not to love this book. The narrator does a fantastic job. When it comes to miss Scarlett O'Hara I find her the most annoying person. it's very hard for me to just read the perspective of someone so whiny and childish. This book is mostly about character development but I found the majority of the book just hating the main character so for me it was not a pleasant read.

A great depiction of what life is like when you are a selfish woman. I enjoyed the history and was pleasantly surprised that she got what she deserved. Great life lessons in this classic.

Great book!

Outstanding

First, is this book racist? Yes; very racist. I don't think it should be in school libraries. It defends slavery and the KKK, slanders the progressive Governor Bullock, and often describes blacks by comparing them to children or animals. Usually in this book, you must remember that each character speaks for themselves, not for the author. But reading the text carefully shows that, in this matter of racism, Mitchell crosses the line; it is the narrator, not just the characters, who must be saying these things. So I had a hard time deciding how to rate it. I feel something like, yes, it should get at least one star off for its racism, but it should have at least 6 stars off to begin with. In an age where respectable critics give novels by Don DeLillo and Cormac McCarthy 5 stars, GWtW surely deserves at least 7 to begin with. Consider /The Lord of the Rings/. This is still considered a great trilogy, yet it's more racist than /Gone With the Wind/: Tolkien sees some races as deserving complete extermination. The only reason people give it a pass is that the races Tolkien calls evil aren't real in our world. But I don't think that excuses it at all. It instills racist attitudes in people. I've seen it happen. Or consider /Lolita/. This is also considered a great book, but you can easily read it as a defense of pederasts and child abductors. Maybe that's more defensible than defending the KKK. We can hate the sin, but still empathize with the sinner. Still, we don't put it in school libraries--yet still call it great. My bottom line is that, as a writer and as a person, this book is so valuable to me that I must give it 5 stars. As a writer, it's valuable to me partly because it's so well-written. I just used it as an example while critiquing a romance story in which the main character said what she thought, and the romance (in that story) broke down for generic reasons that could happen to any romance. Mitchell's romances, by contrast, are all unique and break down or not because of traits particular to the characters involved. Her writing is a great example of what "show, don't tell" should mean: there is much telling, but also much shown by actions, by things unspoken, and in other subtle ways. She handles dialogue very well. No one speaks more directly than they really would, and people interrupt each other realistically. Mitchell sometimes tried to see how many pages she could go using pure dialogue, with no character attributions and no narration. I certainly didn't expect to find that kind of stylistic experimentation in a popular romance novel. I'm not sure whether to count that against the book, or for it. (In either case, it doesn't translate well to audiobook format, because we can't see the opening and closing quote marks. But there are only a few such experimental dialogues.) It's also valuable to me as a writer because it isn't just a masterpiece, but a /popular/ masterpiece. I got the book because I wanted to learn how to write romance, and I thought this was a famous romance novel. Which it is, sort of; but it's so strange by contemporary standards that its popularity is deeply puzzling. The main characters are both terrible people, the romances in the book range from disturbing to horrifying, and the story is more tragedy than romance. No romance publisher today would take a chance on it. So why was this tragic anti-romance about horrible people so popular? Then there's its ambiguity about... everything. The main characters, of course; both Rhett and Scarlett do terrible evil when they're not doing some audacious, non-conformist good. Are they good or bad? Can we call Melanie a "great lady" when she's so willfully ignorant, or Ashley a great man when he bends so easily? Eventually you have to let those questions go. There's also its ambiguity about the old South. The novel has a lot of nostalgia for it, but also a lot of scorn. Mitchell consistently describes the South and the Confederacy as sick, oppressive even to its upper class, unjust, and unwaveringly stupid. Nobility always makes Mitchell's people act stupid; intelligence always makes them selfish. I disagree strongly with this worldview, but Mitchell is no propagandist in presenting it--she's torn between the two views, and much of the novel's tension comes from Mitchell always asking, and never answering, whether it's possible to be both honorable and honest with yourself. As a person, it's valuable to me because it made me realize I'm not the romantic I thought I was. I don't think as deeply about what makes people suitable or unsuitable for each other as Mitchell did, and had never realized that doing so is a legitimate and worth-while artistic and intellectual pursuit.

I had never read the book in my 75 years. Wanted to see what all the fuss was about and I think this book should be retired. I can’t understand the logic of the writer and the character of Scarlet never grew in the 10 years of the book. Not worth reading!

I'll start by saying that the narration is superb. This novel is a daunting undertaking, I imagine, and our narrator did an excellent job juggling so many characters and making them sound distinct, one from another. I might be the last person on earth to never have seen the movie and to have very little knowledge about the story save Rhett Butler's famous, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn," line. But I was clueless. That said, the story is an epic to be sure thought it spans, maybe, ten years. It seems more like a lifetime. Or three of them. So much is packed into the pages of this story from the historic to the imagined. I truly enjoyed it but I will say this. It's a brutal story. It wrung me out. In the final two of three hours of the book, I was gobsmacked and totally at a loss as the assaults just kept coming. It's a tough book, and yes, I feel a little beat up by it. But I also understand why it was awarded the Pulitzer and I'm quite glad to have experienced it.

I grow up watching the movie. the book is way better

Gone with the Wind has always been my favorite all time story.

Beautiful reading of this classic.

great narrator

loved it , narrator was excellent

Enchanting, entertaining, informing, a masterpiece that I read and reread and can read yet again!

Fabulous book

Gone With The Wind is one of my fav books and movies of all time. If you offend REALLY EASY, you will definetly not like this book. don't buy it, u will hate it. But if you are fascinated by history and like a well told story you will be transported to another time. I think my favorite charachter is Melly.

The narration was excellent

Wonderful book that kept me on the edge of my seat.