This morning, while doing my Thanksgiving shopping, I picked up a newly published book titled Rhett Butler's People, which allegedly took 12 years to write--2 years more than the original one. I was immediately attracted to the title and spaced out on the spot for an hour or so until I finished reading the several dozens of pages. I was at Shaw's books area. I could imagine people passing me by looking reprovingly at me because I was in their way, and the shop assistants glaring angrily at me for reading the book for such a long time when I am supposed to buy it if I really want it...but I couldn't draw myself away from the colorless book and the colorful description of Rhett's childhood and teenage years. I was so obsessed with the original book Gone with the Wind that I never pass up on any sequel or review of it. This summer, when I finally unearthed the book Scarlett by Alexandria Ripley, I devoured it hungrily (much to my mother's dissatisfaction because I found it the night before my TOEFL). I knew it was not the original and all the while I read the book, I had the feeling that the Ripley tainted Margaret Michell's original book and the butchered the characters, especially Scarlett, whom Ripley took upon herself to magically transform into the caring mother and wife--the boring housewife. But Michell's thousand page book wasn't enough to satisfy me and the eight interesting encounters between Rhett and Scarlett was too little for me, and I could do nothing other than accept other writer's inferior writing. I knew the writers were probably trying to earn some profit from Michell's success, and that sounds somewhat wrong to me, even though I knew that Michell did the novel for profit as well. Unrealistically, I like to believe that the book is holy, second only to the bible, because I spent my entire childhood drooling over it, and it linked memories of childhood friends. I was first introduced to the book by my uncle when I was very young and toying with his collection of books. I spilled some kind of drink over his favorite book, and in a compromise to not tell mom, I agreed to read that book, which he said I would love. In 7th grade classmates laughed at me when I picked up the book instead of all the renowned books by LuXun on the field trip to the bookstore, only to find that it contained all those complicated Chinese characters I never learnt. I only said I would read it somehow.  I did, the next year, but only after slightly altering the mission--reading the book in English. Even now, my Chinese version of the book lay open at page 20 on my window seat in my room in China, which I am sure grandmother dusts everyday... To read the book, I was slapped by my English teacher in 8th grade. Her reason was that I was reading the book instead of listening to her boring lectures about the past tense, and I screamed that I was reading an English book. I ended up fighting the teacher, who was frail but stubborn. Mother would say it wasn't the fiercest quarrel I had with my teachers, but perhaps, that scene changed my life...

Today, after seeing the new sequel to Gone with the Wind, I knew what I would do with the first day of my winter vacation. Instead of pigging out, sleeping 18 hours and watching cartoons, I would obsessively gaze at the book, and all the while feel it is unfair for Margaret Michell. I sometimes wished that there would be copy right laws baring people from writing sequels to famous books, and that writers would leave the dead's writing and ideas alone....Is writing book everyone love so huge a sin that people would disturb one's peace even after one's dead in an attempt to correct the "moral falsehood" of one's beloved characters?