That's right! I read stuff and this is one of the longest books I have ever taken on. It was so long in fact that when I was presented it by the person I know that lives here that has a library of sorts that I nearly handed it back to him because it just seemed too daunting.
I thought that it might be the longest book I have ever read cover-to-cover but as it turns out it is the 3rd longest. Here are those tomes is if you are interested
- Lord of the Rings including The Hobbit is 575,000 words
- Atlas Shrugged is 570,000 words
- Gone with the Wind is a paltry 420,000 words
Obviously these numbers are rounded because no author would intentionally make certain to end on a perfectly round 100-digit number.
Here is the problem I have with really long books for the most part: There isn't a huge story in there, just a huge amount of words getting to a very small story. I am not a fan of flowery and extremely drawn out descriptions of things and this is what authors like Stephen King do (or at least did) on a regular basis. I can't believe King has sold as many books as he does to be honest since I find most of his stuff to be garbage especially the Richard Bachman pseudonym ones.
Anyway, back to Gone with the Wind.
I think that this book does in fact start a little slow but unlike other books that are long, there is a lot going on. The first 100 pages or so where the story seems to drag a bit is actually extremely crucial in character development that doesn't seem all that important until you realize that it is very much so hundreds of pages later.
While I am certain that a lot of people have seen the film and not read the book, I was the other way around or at least I am now. I have never seen the film and plan to do so, perhaps this afternoon if I decide to not drink beer.
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The movie was apparently a very big undertaking considering the time period and I am looking forward to seeing it. The book was released in a strange time for the world, in the late 30's. The book was released in 1936 and won a Pulitzer Prize the following year. For the most part the story is told from the perspective of Scarlett O'Hara, which is a name you have probably heard said even if you have no idea about the book or the film.
A large portion of the book tells the story of the U.S. Civil War from a southerner's perspective, which isn't something you often see in books or in film. It presents the south as being victims of the terrorization of the northern forces and even goes so far as to suggest that blacks and even blacks that were slaves were better off under the leadership of the Confederacy. I doubt there is very much truth to this but the way in which they tell it is just vague enough to kind of leave it up to you, the reader, as to whether or not you think this is true.
Almost everyone in the story sees their opulent lives turned upside down by the war and this of course includes Scarlett O'Hara, whose estate is practically reduced to nothing. She is a very tough and hard-headed woman and uses every tool at her disposal in order to restore some semblance of wealth to what remains of her family and those she was close to.
One thing I learned from Wikipedia after reading the book that I found very interesting is that according to something called a "Harris poll" Gone with the Wind is the 2nd most popular book amongst Americans, second only to the Bible.
The book should not be ignored because of its length because I found it to be extremely entertaining all the way through and when it finally was over after over a thousand pages, I would have been happy had they carried it on for a thousand more. Of course the binding would fall apart at that point but honestly, even with Atlas Shrugged which I thought was an amazing read, I have never been so captivated for so long by a book of this length.
Unlike a lot of other books I have read, I do not feel as though any time or chapters are wasted simply for the sake of making the book longer. You may recall that this was a big problem I had with the book Watership Down. The book is magnificently long for a children's book, yet only about 4 or 5 events actually happen in the entire thing.
In Gone with the Wind each chapter has a purpose, each character has meaning, very few words are overly flowery unless it is necessary to describe how important something is in the mind of Scarlett such as her love for her home of Tara.
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For anyone that is interested, the Tara Plantation is a real place, sort of. It was built for the sake of the film and there wasn't really much of an interior. It was used mostly just for exterior shots as far as I can tell. The structure was torn down 20 years after the movie was filmed but some of the remnants still exist today. You can own a shutter from the film for a mere $20-$40 thousand dollars!
I guess I kind of went off on a tangent about the film even though I haven't even watched it yet. So I am here to tell you that even though this book is extremely long, you really should read it. It took me 3 weeks to read it and that is a long time for me but to be fair I had quite a lot going on in the past month that got in the way of me getting through it.
There have been very few books that I have read in my life that have actually kept me up past my bedtime because I wanted to read "just one more chapter" but this book, is one of them.