reading & righting
February 19, 2016 § 9 Comments
Confession: I’ve never read “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
As an avid reader and English major it would seem an unlikely truth, an illogical possibility, that I could have avoided this inevitability.
For years, when others spoke to me in broad sweeping assumptions, I relished the misconception that I must have done something I knew too well I hadn’t.
This passive accomplishment became a bit of a private delight and guilty secret. I liked being other than others assumed.
Until this year, today, when I unceremoniously purchased a paperback copy.
I cannot explain the timing of my choice other than it suddenly felt urgent and necessary. Personal.
A penance for my sin.
scribblechic 
It’s time 🙂 Maybe it will give you a realization of something for you…it is amazing where messages come from 🙂
The chronology of fate implies an intimate architecture too easily dismissed as chance. It was, indeed, time.
Sometimes things don’t live up to the hype. We all have different tastes and all that. Recently someone loaned me a copy of The Alchemist, qualifying it with the statement ‘this book changed the way that I think.’ I got half way through it and abandoned it. I just thought it was ‘okay’. One man’s meat and all that.
I truly love To Kill A Mockingbird. It is my favourite book. But The Alchemist was my friend’s favourite book. Decide for yourself.
It is a rare book I read slowly and an even rarer book I’ll read twice. “To Kill a Mockingbird” has earned a special place on a short list.
Will you let us know what you think of it? My guilty secret? Despite degrees in English and teaching, I read trashy vampire novels. Haven’t read a “good” book in years.
It’s a funny thing how we qualify what we read, the secrets of our admiration and pleasure. I would encourage you to read “To Kill a Mockingbird” for the sheer delight of Lee’s writing.
So often I am disappointed by stories that seem plain, prose missing the play and romance of language. In Lee’s work I fell in love again with the magic of written word and the experience of reading as discovery.
I’ve read it. Glad you’re enjoying it. I used to read literature, contemporary literature that got rave reviews. I found much of contemporary fiction was full of unlikeable characters. So, turned off, I turned toward well-written fantasy.
I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed otherwise. Maybe I was hoping for good company arriving late to the same party.
Didn’t mean to sound snippy. I remember it well and, one particular passage especially. Won’t say as it would be a spoiler.