Miss Scarlett is no lady

A few months ago, Lifestyles Land was given an evaluation copy of an upcoming book called "Rhett Butler's People." The book, based on Margaret Mitchell's classic "Gone With the Wind," is written from Rhett Butler's perspective (hence the title).

I'm going to try not to spoil the plot, though, so parts of this will be a little vague.

In Mitchell's original, Rhett was always my favorite character, so I was overjoyed to find out that this book was all about him. Before I started it, I had seen several ads for the book and a New York Times Book Review issue that gave it what I interpreted as a thumbs-up.

My conclusion after reading it is that it might not have been worth all the hype, but I do, overall, like it and would recommend it to "Gone With the Wind" fans. They do, however, need to be cautioned that it repeats part of the original (as it must), which is a little annoying. The book is written using everyday language and I'm confident that anyone who has read the original should be able to read this one without any problems.

Although the book explores the personalities of Rhett's people - Belle, Tazwell, etc., the development of Rhett's father was a lacking in my opinion, while the development of Andrew and Rosemary are perfect. How things end with Andrew and Tazwell are great, though.

The ending is a bit bittersweet, which I liked and the reading itself went by fairly quickly, which I also liked.

Overall, the book gets a thumbs-up from me, despite its flaws. It's a good read, but don't come out of it expecting it to be as good as the original.

Here's a link to the book's Web site.

The best redneck Christmas ever

I spent some time the other night with a good friend of mine from college who happened to be in town. We had a lot of funny moments, including these three:

He went to visit family that he didn't know that well. Upon pulling up in the driveway, he was greeted by more chickens than he saw the entire time he was in the Peace Corps, along with plastic deer that were riddled with bullet holes. But they weren't the only thing with bullet holes - his distant family's mobile home also had them. Upon entering, the Christmas tree was Dale Earnhardt and the background noise... yep, they were watching a Jeff Foxworthy special on CMT.

The other odd thing I will relay is that there really isn't an un-awkward way to hug in a car.

And... chocolate-covered espresso beans are not meant for canine consumption. My dogs stole them from my mother's Christmas gift. They were all four OK, but were literally bouncing off the walls for hours.