To Kill a Mockingbird in Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge

Jun 27, 2008 Graceann rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, banned-by-idiots

To Kill a Mockingbird is the first book I ever read that I immediately turned over and re-read from the beginning, all over again. I was thirteen years old, and I was blown away by the themes, the literary style and the story. I continue to think about it many (too many) years later, and it wasn't until I was an adult that I saw the film, so I came to it entirely fresh.

While I don't think it's "necessary" that we learn from every book, I do believe that we DO, whether we intend to or not. Every ...more

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Jul 19, 2010 Brenda added it

What in sam hill? I forgot to read this on the actual 50th birthday of To Kill a Mockingbird. Do not fret, I read it a few days later and reacted with the usual tears, laughter and wonderment. My affection for Scout, Jem, Atticus, Boo, Dill, Calpurnia, Miss Maudie, and even Walter Cunningham of Old Sarum remains strong. I could write an essay on this book and what it means, but it would take years. Each and every time I re-read it, I notice something new and as the years go on I appreciate thing ...more

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Aug 11, 2009 Beth Given rated it really liked it

A classic. This is so many people's favorite, possibly because it's required reading in practically everyone's school experience and so it evokes feelings of nostalgia -- it did for me, at least. We'd read this book in eighth grade (I seem to remember reading it aloud?) and I remembered the hiding place in the tree's knothole and the sweltering heat of the courtroom balcony. Somehow I had forgotten a lot of the rest, though, so it was fun to rediscover this book. I enjoyed the themes of justice ...more

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Nov 21, 2010 Graceann rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: classics

I can't honestly tell you that this will be a review. It's an appreciation - or more accurately, a celebration.

I rarely re-read. For the most part, this is due to the fact that there's so much out there waiting for me to read it that I can't justify the time it takes to revisit something I've already experienced. There is another reason, however; I'm sometimes frightened. Frightened that something I adored beyond all measure won't stand up to another look. In the case of Scout, Atticus, Jem, Bo I can't honestly tell you that this will be a review. It's an appreciation - or more accurately, a celebration.

I rarely re-read. For the most part, this is due to the fact that there's so much out there waiting for me to read it that I can't justify the time it takes to revisit something I've already experienced. There is another reason, however; I'm sometimes frightened. Frightened that something I adored beyond all measure won't stand up to another look. In the case of Scout, Atticus, Jem, Boo and their assorted neighbors and friends, I needn't have suffered a moment's apprehension. TKAM stands up to re-reading almost 30 years later, and looking at it as an adult gave me a perspective that I couldn't have possibly enjoyed as a teenager. For instance, I didn't even know who Truman Capote was when I was 13, but now I can appreciate that the character of Dill was based upon him, because he and Harper Lee were childhood friends.

I last read To Kill a Mockingbird 29 years ago as of this writing. It was the first "classic" book that I read not because it had been assigned to me, but because I wanted to. Perhaps this, in addition to its stellar quality, is why I love it so much. Some books that I might have loved otherwise had all the joy sucked out of them by people intent on "teaching" them rather than letting them teach us. But that's another discusion. When I got to the end of TKAM, I immediately turned it over and re-read it from the beginning, out of sheer admiration. There was much in it to appeal to a 13-year-old girl, and it was the kind of book that made me miss bus stops, and not hear school bells or parental commands.

For those who may not know the premise, Scout is a little girl in small-town Alabama, and her father, an attorney, has been assigned the thankless task of defending a black man accused of rape. This opens the family up to the court of public opinion and the children have questions that parents would probably not like to have to deal with. Atticus is more forward thinking than most men of his time, but he is not immune to reality.

On this reading, I was more able to enjoy the peripheral characters; people I had entirely forgotten about, such as Mrs. Dubose and Maudie Atkinson, Dolphus Raymond and Link Deas. None of them are cardboard or stereotypical; they each have their gifts and layers.

So, yes, To Kill a Mockingbird not only stands up to reading, but re-reading. I've seen some negative reviews (some of which were brutally ugly in their conception and execution, making me think that it's not so much a review as a working out of some deeper problem), and quite frankly, I'm unaware of what book those other people are reading, because the points they raise certainly don't apply to this one. Many times I've loved a book that others have hated, and when I've read their reasons for doing so, I've said "well, I still love it, but I see their point." That has never been the case with the negative reviews of TKAM, even when I'm reading one written by someone who takes the time to elaborate on what they didn't like about it, as opposed to the vacuous "I had to read this for school and it was so, like, boring!" It is a hands-down masterpiece, and I've yet to hear credible evidence that would sway me from this knowledge. ...more

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