I would quite like to keep a record of books that I am currently enjoying. This can be difficult as I am desperately impatient. I can be half-way through 5 books at any one time but here goes. I had a lot of time to kill at Uni today so -armed with my trusty Kindle- I sat down and read Charles Dickens' short ghost story The Signal-Man. This was a great little story about a railway signal-man, who repeatedly saw the spectre of a man before something awful happened on the railway line...chilling stuff!
Other than this I dipped into a bit Jane Austen's Lady Susan too. I'd forgotten how gloriously manipulative the eponymous heroine really is. For so short a piece she is an incredibly lively character: I would have loved to see her equal in a longer work.
What I'm most excited about though is that I've finally got round to starting Gone With the Wind. The gorgeous pictures of Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara have been drawing me to the story for a couple of years now, and I've decided that 2013 shall be the year for it.
I mean what a face!
Naturally, the reading of the novel must always precede the adaptation when
possible so true to form I am three chapters in and loving it so far. Margaret
Mitchell's style of prose is so vivid and colourful, especially when describing
the red dust state of Georgia. My copy of the novel is dear to me as it has the most charming inscription on the inside cover.
It says: 'If this book should dare to roam, box its ears and send it home'. Second hand books are a passion of mine, and I am pretty proud of my collection which I have been working on for a while now, but I just adore the characters and the history's that you get with them!
Anyway, I can't say I think much of Scarlett at
the moment, but what I can gather from diehard fans is that it's all part of
the charm of the novel. We would soon get bored if we immediately adored every
literary character that ever sauntered into fruition.
