I like goals. I like giving myself something to achieve and getting it done. My number one problem with goals is I rush them in the end. Why? Because I’m already thinking about the next goal I want to accomplish.
My life makes it rather obvious that my goals are not lofty. I’ll never sit in the Oval Office, or become a CEO of some multi-million dollar company, and I never went to Ivy League college to achieve anything like that. And, lately, my number one goal is to get through the day without Ethan getting stuck on something he wasn’t supposed to be up on to start with. Or Emry doing her school without tears because the “H” she just wrote wasn’t perfect. Little goals. But even those are something very difficult to achieve.
Last year I didn’t have a precise reading goal. I wanted to read some old favorites. (Did that!) And I wanted to read a few books off my shelf I have had for years but simply never read. (Did not do that…libraries full of books to check out are such distractions!) So, this year I thought I would be more precise. I just had to figure out what that would mean.
I did think about reading the third (and final!) volume of Shelby Foote’s Civil War trilogy. I can’t remember when I read the first one. The second was my reading goal in 2017 (nailed it!). The third one is…HUGE! I have to remind myself that it includes all the footnotes, and references, and appendices…but still. I just wasn’t up for it.
Sooo…something else came to mind. I’m not sure why. Maybe I had Civil War on the mind. It’s not like I’ve seen the movie more than once and that had to be 15 or so years ago. Unlike women my grandmother’s age who think Clark Gable is the Hugh Jackman of his time, I see very little to like about the guy. And I spent most of the movie (all two VHS cassettes) wanting to through something at the television if it would just make Vivien Leigh stop whining. You might have guessed it by now. Yep. Gone with the Wind.
Back when I was in 7thor 8thgrade I had a friend a couple of years older than I who had read it and said it was much better than the movie. Although I knew the gist of the plot, I had not seen the movie then. Fifteen or so years ago I watched it just to say I had. Or maybe to figure out why my uncle swore he would never take my grandmother and her friends to the drive-in again, especially to watch a movie they sighed and fawned over every time Clark Cable walked on screen. My mom found the book at an old bookstore around that time, bought it, read it and said she liked it. For some reason, all that came back to mind so I have borrowed my mom’s copy and intend to get it read.
Honestly, it’s not a lofty goal. It certainly won’t take me a year to read a book a great deal shorter than War and Peacewhich took me only a summer to get through. But Ed is intimidated on my behalf.
“Don’t you think you ought to get started on that?” he asked the night after I got it.
“I can’t,” I answered. “I got to finish this one first.”
I showed him Jeff Shaara’s last Civil War novel The Fateful Lightningwhich I had borrowed from my sister Sally several weeks ago and was just getting into. (I like Shaara’s writing, but I have a psychological problem reading the last book in Civil War series. The fate of the South was decided well over 150 years ago, but I just hate reliving it and wishing it had been different. Besides, I also can’t stand William Tecumseh Sherman…little twirp.)
He look disconcerted on my behalf. After all, it is just as long as Gone with the Windif not a little bit longer.
But I’m not worried. It’ll get done. And I’ll let you know what I think…if I don’t end up throwing it at whiny Scarlett O’Hara, that is.
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