I'm finally reading GWTW.  It's been on my TBR pile for 10+ years, I love the movie, and I have a gorgeous hardcover copy of the book, so I had no excuse for not reading it.  I'm loving it so far, but its really long.   Parts of it are cringe-inducingly racist, like all the times in Oliver Twist when Dickens makes some anti-Semitic remark about Fagin, but I'm still really enjoying it.  Rhett Butler is pretty freakin' hot!

You are in for a real treat with that book. My fiance read it and made me read it and I could not put it down. It took awhile to finish but it was one of those rare reads that I could not believe was going to end. I actually enjoyed the book a thousand times more than the movie.

I've read GWTW twice and enjoyed it each time.  Later on, I reccommend that you read Rhett Butler's People, but not Scarlett.  RBP came out a couple of years ago and I really enjoyed it.  Scarlett, I believe, was commissioned by the Margaret Mitchell estate but I don't know anyone who liked it.

Oh, how I love that book. The racist stuff is unpleasant, yes, but I think it's helpful to see how people in the South viewed African-Americans after the war and how that attitude was passed along over the decades. And the rest of the history is just riveting, I think.

I'm envious of you, getting to read it for the first time!

GWtW was my favorite, favorite book when I first read it - I was in 6th grade. Both my parents felt the need to discuss it with me.  My mom told me that childbirth wasn't always so awful, and my dad talked to me about the racism (FYI - my mom loved the book, my dad thought it was complete trash).

As an adult, the thing I find most distressing about the terrible racism in the book is that it was indicative of how many people saw the world as recently as the 1930s.  But on the other hand, the book is also really feminist in a lot of ways. 

And it's total brain crack.  Completely unputdownable.

Loved, loved, loved that book.

One of the best parts was the complete and total shallowness of Scarlett.  There are a lot of authors who have used the whole Scarlett attitude for their heroines.  Phillipa Gregory majorly ripped off Scarlett in Wideacre (and tarted her up a lot!).

The historical information in that book was awesome too.  It helped me to understand Reconstruction and why the South hated it so much.

Much, much, much better than the movie.

Absolutely adore Gone WIth The Wind.  I revisit every few years, as well as Scarlett.  Scarlett is a fun continuation of the classic, IMHO.

This was one of those rare cases where I love the book and movie equally.  Parts of it made me want to bang characters/author/people who think that way over the head (i.e. Ashley being appalled at using convicts for forced labor but completely failing to see how that's comprable to slavery) and the fact that the book was written in the 1930s and people still thought that way!

But I love the story of Scarlett & Rhett, even though I always want to deus ex machina and give them a happy ending.  Goddamit, why must love stories always end sadly?!  I also love the relationship between Scarlett & Melanie, such awesome female characters both.  IMO, they're the best BFFs in all of American lit, and Melanie in the second half of the book is awesome.  She kicks ass, this little, shy, proper Southern lady who tells her whole society to basically go hell if they disrespect her friend, and who always always trusts her own judgment about people.  But again- why must everything end sadly?!  I love it, but it makes me OD on pathos.