What I'm Reading ATM

I pride myself in being an avid reader and would go as far as saying reading is one of my longest and most favourite passions which began from the instant I realised I could read.

I'm a little ashamed that I haven't kept my blog up-to-date with my current reads...and I have omitted many 'reviews' of books I've read over the past months but I will attempt to remedy that in the future with a list of what I have read since my last "What I'm Reading ATM" post. (Gosh...has it really been more than twelve months!!)

When I mentioned to a friend recently, that I have not read Margaret Mitchell's Gone With The Wind or seen the movie she couldn't believe it and insisted on loaning me her copy of the classic.

I had just a few days earlier started reading Tolstoy's Anna Karenin (another classic I've not as yet read) (and which I'd picked up for two dollars off a social page garage sale). 

When I realised that Gone With The Wind is a hefty tome of a book (and exceeds the page count of Anna by something like two hundred pages), I put Anna aside and commenced on Gone With The Wind  so I could return it to its rightful owner sooner rather than later.

I have to admit surprise to the book's easy and instant engagement with me the reader. I have read over two hundred pages of the one thousand plus pages (filled with minuscule print) and I continue to want to move forward and to have revealed to me more of Scarlett's un-ordinary life and irascible character.

What I find amusing is how fashionable the names of the characters have been in the twentieth century...Rhett, Ashley, Cade, Brent, Scarlett, India...well, if I'd seen the movie or read the book earlier I would have know why...and there I was thinking these names were so contemporary...as if someone had pulled them out of thin air.

Mitchell writes with ease and I can just darn hear the drawl of the Southern belles and beaux and even more so of their many, many, slaves. 

I realise now that I have been depriving myself by not having read the book and will hold judgement on the movie until I've seen it.

Is there a 'classic' novel title missing from your life's book list that you have put off reading...for whatever reason...or insist on not reading? Why?