I had the book To Kill A Mockingbird on my shelf at home during all my growing up years, and I never read it. I finally picked it up yesterday, and didn't put it down until I finished it late last night. It is definitely a classic, deserving of all the accolades... but I felt like I knew the plot already. I think I've seen at least 3 or 4 movies with suspiciously similar plots, as well as different TV shows and maybe even other books that borrowed generously from it.
Some additional observations:
- I am surprised that I have never heard the name Atticus Finch before. He is such an iconic figure, in such a famous book, I would have expected to know the name. But maybe I had heard it before without noticing, like when you learn a new word in a foreign language and all of a sudden you start hearing the word all over and you realize that you've heard the word quite often but just never knew it before.
- If you were in a high school English class, and you had to answer the question "Who is the Mockingbird?" I think you could go with just about any of the main characters. Although Scout identifies Boo Radley explicitly, and Tom is the other obvious one, you could also make a case for Atticus, Jem, Scout, and even Gill.
- It's amazing that the author, Nelle Harper Lee, only published one book. Talk about batting 1000.
- I really hate racists. I think we should put them in their own schools and make them eat at their own lunch counters.
- I need to ban myself from reading books, it takes up too much time.
6 comments:
I watched the Oscar-winning movie adaptation a few weeks ago, it's quite good as well - Atticus won best actor, and it also won best screen adaptation and art direction.
I also read that TKAM is the most-read book in high school curriculum in the US, I don't know how you got out of it. It was part of my curriculum in junior English, but I didn't read it at the time. But in Summer '06 I had a lot of free time and started reading random novels, including that and The Great Gatsby, which I likewise hadn't read in junior English though it was assigned.
Your non-stop approach to reading TKAM seems eerily similar to your non-stop reading of the "Mutiny on the Bounty" pocket classic.
One of my favorite books! I also never had it assigned for class, but that didn't make much difference for me, as I read it for the first time in junior high :)
I also read it for the first time recently (about two years ago). It's one of the best (along with The Lord of the Rings and A Tale of Two Cities). Remind me who Gill is? Additional potential mockingbirds that come to mind (maybe) are the old lady and the guy who pretended to be drunk.
Gill is the neighbor kid that came for the Summers and played w/ Jem and Scout
Wait that's Dill, is there also a Gill?
I meant Dill.
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