Who the Hell is Pansy O’Hara?

The Fascinating Stories Behind 50 of the World’s Best-Loved Books

By Jenny Bond and Chris Sheedy
Read: May 2009
Rating: Nifty

What is it? A bunch of short article/chapters about famous authors, and their famous books–and what made the authors write those books.

This is a nice little book to browse through between longer projects. At first I had my doubts, since there’s a good deal of biographical information that could be gotten anywhere, but the writersdo a good job of crafting a semi-narrative that highlights elements in authors’ lives–seemingly, the elements that contributed to the major book in question.

Some I had prior knowledge of, some I didn’t. I confess, I skipped the ones that I knew nothing about. It’s definitely more enjoyable when you know something about the writer or the book being discussed. You don’t have to have read them, just have some knowledge about them. I’ve never read Jaws (wasn’t really aware that it was a book before it became a movie, actually), but I liked what this book had to say about it.

I particularly liked the piece about Margaret Mitchell, who wrote Gone With the Wind. I’d already heard the story about her reluctance to be a published author, but this book phrased it in such a way that it felt much more lively. Interesting factoid: the original manuscript was taller than Mitchell!

I have to say that the parts I enjoyed the most were those about nonfiction books: the English dictionary, the Encyclopedia Britannica, Emily Post’s Etiquette guide, etc. Nonfiction often gets overlooked by us fiction people.

Anyway, it was fun, and I’m passing it on to my writer friends, whose eyes also lit up at the sight of it.

And, by the way, Pansy O’Hara was what Mitchell originally called Scarlett. I’m so glad she changed it… I couldn’t take a Southern Belle named Pansy who says Fiddle-dee-dee! seriously.