Is GWTW a good book to read?

Yes

I liked it better than I thought I would.

I just finished the book this year.
I see the acclaim it gets given the time period it was written.

But…the book is terribly slow, written by a female and essentially told from the perspective of a selfish teenage girl that is insufferable and full of a cast of horrendous people that you never really care about except for one.

The only redeeming quality of the book to me was some insight into the civil war from a Southern perspective. Lots of good racism in there too, but also some perspective to me about slavery from different vantage point.

But man, it is overly verbose, painfully repetitive in theme, and at times agonizingly slow.

I would not recommend it personally. I prefer Lonesome Dove, The Count of Monte Cristo, even Dune or Hyperion well before GWtW.

I will concede that women may enjoy the book more than men given the author and female perspective.

Scarlet has a damn strong case as the greatest character in American literature.

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Hyperion by Dan Simmons? Tell me more about this book, please.

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I think it is a very unique science fiction novel that centers around a group of strangers that have to go on a mission to a planet (Hyperion) for a task.

None of them know each other and as their journey progresses they each tell their backstories and why they are on this mission.

So…you get to read multiple different individual science fiction stories for character development which are vastly different. He does a great job of weaving it altogether cohesively and some of the imagery he creates with words is pretty nuts.

It covers a wide array of topics from religion, time, love, death etc.

There is a followup book as well which was also good.

I found it to be a little bit easier and less time consuming read than Dune.

Yes it is. Satisfying in many ways, particularly in plot and character development, though I do think the story could’ve ended 100-150 pages sooner and been the better for it