Greetings from the Corner Cafe. Think of it as an online book club. I love reading books and will be using this forum to post my thoughts as I appraise them. Reading is still one of the most inexpensive forms of entertainment today, and one that's not going out of style anytime soon.
My favorite book
Gone With The Wind. I realize this novel has fared its share of heavy scrutiny, had numerous perspectives drawn from it and I certainly don't deign myself to be a true historian in its accurate interpretation. I'm just a reader with an immense appreciation for Margaret Mitchell's storytelling of that era. It's not a typical war movie that retells the events of the Civil War, but rather explores the perspective of a young Scarlet O'Hara, starting from her teens, to whom I believe many young women, even in this day and age, can quite easily relate. Watch as she navigates her way through the trials of love and heartbreak, her relentless and stubborn determination to get the things she sets her mind to, even at high cost to her pride.
Take notice of her apathy, especially in the story's beginning, when she replies hotly to the Tarleton brothers' discussion on the pending war,...
"If either of you boys says "war" just once again, I'll go in the house and slam the door."
She defies the embodiment of Confederate womanhood, standing defiant and separate in her indifference. There's a certain vanity about her, an aloofness, particularly in the beginning, where she appears absent of any compassion in her attitude towards the war. But then comes the inevitable turning point, and Scarlet finds herself standing in another defiance against a poverty that threatens to swallow her whole, one that she refuses to succumb to in that epochal of pivotal moments in her life, "...as God is my witness they're not going to lick me. I'm going to live through this and when it's all over, I'll never be hungry again. No, nor any of my folk. If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill. As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again."
And Scarlet makes good on this promise.