Gone With The Wind: Reread dates 8/9-8/18

The Book: Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

First Edition: 1936

My Edition: Pocket Books Paperback edition 2008

Pre Reread notes:

OK, so I’ve got a busy week ahead of me. When I’m not working or writing I have this kind of quirky hobby. I produce musicals for this group that Katie and I started. It’s a time consuming and expensive hobby, especially because our production goes up this week. Producing the show is really fun, but it also means that I won’t have a lot of time to read or write, so I knew that if I wanted to do any list books it would have to be one that would take a while. Hence, Gone With The Wind.

I’ve always considered Scarlett’s particular philosophy:

“I can’t think about that now, I’ll think about that tomorrow.”

Very influential to my life. Sometimes you just can’t think about something as it happens.

Unfortunately a lot like Scarlett, I often find myself 100% in denial of my situation. Sure, it’s a little different, because well, Scarlett wasn’t thinking about things like, starvation, or her dead husbands, or the one man she ever loved leaving her forever, where as mine was stuff like, not wanting to move into my dorm so I wouldn’t pack.

Gone With The Wind is another one that I actually don’t remember the book so well. But the movie has had a huge impact on me. Not just because of the poofy dresses thing. But here’s the thing, Scarlett was one of the first characters who I really comprehended who was a bitch, and that was what was good about her. She didn’t take people’s crap, or anything. Not a lot of time to write here, most everything will be in post.

Post Reread Notes

You know how sometimes when you’re twelve you’re an idiot?

When I was twelve, I was an idiot. I’m not saying I don’t love Scarlett anymore. I still totally appreciate that one can be a bitch and still get ahead. No, it’s not that. It’s that I used to hate with a passion that stupid mealy mouthed Melanie Wilkes.

Not so much anymore.

Melly’s a pretty badass character. Sure because she’s sickly and her husband is a douchebag (I’ll get to Ashley later, UGH) you don’t get to see a lot of it, but really, the way she’s always super nice to Scarlett, and the way she stands up for her when everyone says that Scarlett and Ashley are sleeping together, it’s so nice. Also, I think she was just not an idiot and knew that there was no way that Ashley and Scarlett were sleeping together, because well, she slept with Ashley and I bet he’s really bad in bed, and she knew Scarlett would probably not put up with that. Hence why she married Rhett. Or maybe that’s just my interpretation.

And speaking of Rhett…

Oh Rhett Butler. It’s hard to forget your first real literary crushes. While most of my like minded friends were swooning for Mr. Darcy (fools!) I was wishing more than anything for Rhett Butler. Yes, I never cared much for romantic sappery, because I loved Rhett, I wanted (and still want) a sparring partner, someone who I can match wits with, the way Scarlett and Rhett do. I hold by the truly romantic notion that Scarlett goes home to Tara, and she does get Rhett back. These two were destined for each other. Other literary romantic couples don’t give me that feeling. It always sort of bugged me when Lizzie and Darcy got together, he was just so stuffy and she was so freewheeling and independent. It would be like if, well, if Scarlett ended up with Ashley.

Ashley Wilkes might be my most hated character in literature. I can’t stand him. I actually said to my sister when I started rereading:

“God, in the book, Ashley is even more of a dipshit than in the movie.”

And he is. Just a total dipshit. Oh boo hoo, you can’t have sex with your wife because she can’t get pregnant and might die. You want to know what you shouldn’t do in that situation? Uh, string your childhood sweetheart (her best friend) along with “But I really love you, aw gee, if we weren’t married we could totally get it on!” Dipshit. Melly deserved way better.

I’ve realized lately how lucky I am, that I’ve found my Tara, finally. What is my Tara exactly? Well, any person’s Tara is their touchstone, the one thing that can clear their mind and heart and make them feel like nothing can touch them. My Tara? Is Tom Foolery Theatre. That’s the group that Katie and I started. It’s my touchstone, and I’m kind of Scarlett like when I’m there. I yell, I throw fits, but god help any person who tries to take it away from me.

So I started school this week. I’ll be busy, but I’m going to keep reading (at least 1 a month, right? That’s the rule!)

Bitter is The New Black: Reread Dates 8/2-8/4

The Book: Bitter is the New Black: Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-centered Smart ass or Why You Should Never Carry a Prada Bag to The Unemployment Office by Jen Lancaster

First Edition: 2006

My Edition: 2006 Paperback edition

Pre reread Notes:

Jen Lancaster is one of my favorite writers. As a matter of fact, she’s one of the reasons I started coming around to the idea of non fiction writing as a valid form of creative expression. (Not just “whining and writing a journal and getting it published for attention” as I previously dismissed it.) This might have something to do with the fact that Jen and I have a lot in common. World view wise I mean. Jen also does things like watch TV that she knows is terrible because she thinks it’s hilarious. Jen has also drank an entire bottle of white wine and not understood why she always gets a headache when it happens. Stuff like that.

I discovered Jen because my two best friends Katie and Katherine (yes, those are their real names, and I know, it can get confusing) were both really into her. Katie had been reading her blog Jennsylvania, and sent it to me asking, “Are you posing undercover as this person?” Katherine was reading Bitter and insisting to me that I read it. “Reenie,” she said. “You don’t understand, when I read it, I feel like I’m talking to you.” So I picked up the book.

I was hooked. I sped through it and immediately bought her other two books, Bright Lights, Big Ass and Such a Pretty Fat. I started reading Jennsylvania on a regular basis (I still make sure to catch up on it at least once a week, although my life is more crazy than it was at that point.) But I loved everything about this book. From the opening lines, where Jen describes a time that she traded her lunch with a homeless man for a Coach briefcase he was holding on to. This is not something I would do, not because I don’t wish I had a Coach briefcase, but because homeless people terrify me. I know that’s not PC or Christ like of me. But they smell bad, and they often yell at you, and there’s this one lady by my office who has a rabid cat on a leash and she terrifies me. Anyway, this story enlightened me to how much I needed to be Jen, or at least like her.

Then we met Fletch, Jen’s boyfriend and later husband. Katie, Katherine and I have decided that we want to be in a polygamist marriage with Jen and Fletch. We figure Jen would be cool with it because it would make a good reality show. Either way, we adore Fletch.

So how did Bitter change my life, exactly? Well, it just did. It got me into memoirs, got me blogging seriously (for a while at least, and here I am doing it again.) and of course brought me closer to the two friends who will always and have always been there for me. Having something else to talk about (not that Katie, Katherine and I have ever had a shortage of conversation topics) plus a new event book every year. I never experienced what is commonly called “Post Potter Depression” because I’ve spent every summer since Harry Potter ended trying to fill the large gaping hole left in my life by a new book coming out. Jen almost does the job. Seriously. It’s not exactly the same, but instead of magic and drama Jen offers be unbridled hilarity and drinking stories. And that my friends, is absolutely life changing.

Post Reread Notes

“I’m rereading Jen.”

“Which one?”

“Bitter,”

“I wish I could go back and read Bitter again,” Katherine sighed, “but like read it for the first time again.”

I think in general this is a feeling I’m going to get a lot during this year. I would give anything to go back to the first time I read some of these books, I totally get why Katherine feels this way. Bitter is not one of those books. It’s one that I’m so glad I read again now, after the past six months of my life. True confession time:

I’ve been living at home and working at a job that I love for the past six months, but none of it is for a good reason. I had a nervous breakdown and flunked out of school.

Well, not exactly flunked out, but I’d dropped/blown off/stumbled through too many classes for my parents and my school to take it anymore, and mental health-wise, I was mess. There was crying and yelling and anger and excuses, but the fact of the matter was, I don’t think I had real deal depression, though for a while I convinced myself I did. I think by being selfish and acting like a spoiled bitch, I’d made a bad situation worse.

I told you. Me and Jen, we’ve got a lot in common.

See, the whole point of Bitter Is The New Black is that Jen brought about her own destruction by being selfish and acting like a spoiled bitch. In her later books I learned that even though by the time she hit her teen years she was living in the Midwest and has stayed there ever since, she lived about fifteen minutes from where I live when she was a kid. See, Jen and Fletch got really rich during the dot com boom. And they weren’t so smart about it. They rented a huge apartment in a trendy neighborhood. Jen developed a huge shopping addiction. (Not the kind that can be satisfied at discount stores, or by frequenting the clearance rack). So when they both got laid off, their excesses made them lose everything.

I’m luckier than Jen in a lot of ways. My self indulgent, stupid behavior manifested itself not in spending too much money (at least not my money) but in eating wayy more fried food than I should, watching too many old teen dramas on my laptop instead of doing my homework and going to class like a good girl. While I do not regret the wonderful times that I spent with Mlles Buffy Summers and Veronica Mars, not to mention the close personal relationship I formed with the Walsh twins and the Scott brothers, I do think I could have planned my time with them better. See, when you fail five out of eight classes in two semesters (yup) people get pissed. My parents were sick of me wasting their money and concerned that I wasn’t doing it in the usual social way of drinking too much cheap beer with my friends.

Jen’s downturn resulted in moving to a bad neighborhood in Chicago, getting her car repossessed and not being able to pay her electric bill. Mine was way less dramatic. I did have to move home, explain to my friends at college why I wasn’t going to be around for our last semester (something I still haven’t done for a lot of them, during my “bad time” as I call it, I was really isolated and stopped talking to them for the perfectly good reason of no reason at all.) I was lucky to find my job, which I’m convinced pulled me out of my self created black hole. And I have these two really amazing friends. I mentioned them before, Katie and Katherine. I know God sent me angels in the form of these two. Jen had Fletch and the two of them pulled together and got their life back on track. Jen discovered her calling as a writer, and I discovered my passion for retail. See, our stories are like totally the same!

Alright not really but I saw enough of myself in Jen the first time around, that rereading it, I saw what I needed to see. I felt a huge swell of pride when I realized what I’d been through, and how well I’d come out the other side.

In a few weeks I’m headed back to school. My screwing up has lead me to need two more semesters instead of just one, but it’s cool. It’s six months of my life. Just six months. It’s nothing. Jen lived in that horrible barrio apartment above that vegan poet for a year. I can certainly live in a student apartment four nights a week, so that I can my degree and chase a career in a retail or publishing or some combination. (Barnes and Noble or Borders? Yes please!) And you know something, I’m ready for that.

At least, I think I am.