et another Top Ten Tuesday I swore I’d get done on time…as always brought to you by The Broke and the Bookish. The topic for this week: Top Ten Books I Had VERY Strong Emotions About
1. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger Only the second time around did I find myself emotional over this book, but I won’t rehash that here since I reviewed it earlier this year.
2. Here on Earth by Alice Hoffman I think this is the only Oprah’s Book Club pick I’ve ever read. It was on sale at the library and I took it home with me. It was all beat up naturally. I read it…and even though I know I shouldn’t feel sorry for the person I’m crying for, I do all the same.
3. A Separate Peace by John Knowles WHY FINNY WHY *sob*
4. The Bitch Posse by Martha O’Connor So the book that changed the way I choose books also had me BAWLING like a baby in the last chapter.
5. The Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman You know I didn’t like this book all that much but I found myself crying toward the end.
6. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell The ending to this book broke my heart in ways the movie never could. While I do feel Clark Gable is perfect in the role of Rhett Butler, the final scene between Rhett and Scarlett is so much sadder in the book, and even when he says “My dear, I don’t give a damn” (that’s right, there was no frankly in the book), it’s in such a defeated tone, and not the sardonic “Get bent, Wench!” tone that’s taken on in the film.
7. The Bad Seed by William March So I forgot to include this book in my Top 10 Disturbing Books list. I remember being really disturbed at a certain part and just flinging the book aside because I couldn’t deal. To be fair, the book isn’t particularly graphic but there’s one brief description that’s never left my mind.
8. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis Oh infamous rat scene! Let’s just say that was NOT the scene I was most horrified by, probably because I had already heard about it. Oh no, I was deeply disgusted by another scene that literally caused me to fling the book away and squirm around a lot.
9. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keys Cheating a bit with this one as I haven’t actually read more than a couple of pages. Why? Because I KNOW me. There are two guaranteed ways to make me cry while reading: 1) kill off a dog 2) write about someone who is mentally challenged (this is one of the reasons I cannot deal with Of Mice and Men either). I’ve only read a bit toward the end of this novel, but it had me practically bawling in the middle of the bookstore…so I think it’s safe to say I won’t be touching this one….ever.
10. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton You know what Edith? I love you, but fuck you and your gutwrenching endings!
one With the Wind turned 75 this past Thursday and will always have a special place in my heart. It was my first favorite ‘adult’ book. Like many, I saw the film first. It was often shown on WPIX around Thanksgiving and my mom would watch it every year. Plus she had a lovely special edition. At the time, I was too young to appreciate it. THIS FILM IS TOO LONG, I thought. WHY IS THERE AN INTERMISSION?! But eventually something clicked. And I can no longer remember if reading the book helped things click or if the movie finally started to resonate with me and then I began reading the book (probably the latter). I would read a chapter here and there. For whatever reason, I didn’t start at the beginning, I kind of just dived in. I suppose it wasn’t really my intention to read the whole thing, I was mostly looking for clarification and expansion. But eventually I did end up reading the whole thing. It took years, not because of its length so much as the sporadic nature of my reading. Something kept calling me back. Despite what anyone says, the book is a lot better than the film. It’s infinitely more detailed. The film chooses to focus most of its attention on Scarlett and Rhett because it has to. It’s already four hours even with its diminished scope. But the book actually goes into a lot of detail about Scarlett’s parents, and you get a better sense of her sisters’ motivations (Suellen, though still detestable in the book, is a fully fleshed out character and not just a one dimensional whiny brat). Scarlett is both a better and worse mother (she does truly love Bonnie, though she is never as attentive as Rhett, but she is an awful mother to her first two children who don’t even exist in the film but would shed light on why Rhett tells her that ‘even a cat’s a better mother than you’). 
