|
Loading... To Kill a Mockingbirdby Harper Lee
LibraryThing recommendationsMember recommendations
Loading...
won't like
will probably not like
will probably like
will like
will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. This is a stellar book. It's received tons of attention and rightly so. I think the characters are human, heroic, and rich enough to draw our sympathy without being one-dimensional. I think this book is a real masterpiece. (  )1   Stodelay | Nov 1, 2009 |  My wife recommended this book, and it was a great read. It's too bad Harper Lee didn't write more novels. (  )1 Anagarika | Oct 30, 2009 | We did this play in high school; I was called at the last minute to be an extra in the courtroom scene. I remember being struck by the quiet power of the dialogue. Now, over a decade later, I've finally read the novel on which it was based and rediscovered that feeling. I've found there are very few books that live up to so much hype - recently a group of librarians declared this to be the best book of the 20th century - but this is one of those rare exceptions. It's thought-provoking and complex while remaining very readable and entertaining. I definitely recommend this book. ( ) melydia | Oct 28, 2009 | It's been years since I read this beautiful coming of age story and it was time to revisit it. Scout is one of my favorite characters of all time. I love how upset she gets when her teacher, horrified that Scout knows how to read at the beginning of first grade, tells her to stop reading with her father at home. And her relief when Atticus says they will continue to read together, but they won't tell the teacher... Even though I have probably read this book about 20 times now, I discover new things to love about it with each reading. This time, I especially appreciated the beauty of Scout's relationship with her father. As my own father has recently resurfaced in my life (an unwelcome event, to say the least), I have been thinking a great deal just lately about the nature of fatherhood. As Scout gets to know the local crazy man and watches her father defend a black man accused of raping a white woman, she learns about the nature of justice and the dangers of judging others only by what you think you know. This is a classic for a reason (and the movie's pretty good, too). ( )4 mrsdwilliams | Oct 21, 2009 | I LOVED this book. Enjoyable and engaging from the first page to the last. I would read it over and over. ( )2 Featherfire | Oct 15, 2009 | 
 Author Lee, 34, an Alabaman, has written her first novel with all of the tactile brilliance and none of the preciosity generally supposed to be standard swamp-warfare issue for Southern writers. The novel is an account of an awakening to good and evil, and a faint catechistic flavor may have been inevitable. But it is faint indeed; Novelist Lee's prose has an edge that cuts through cant, and she teaches the reader an astonishing number of useful truths about little girls and about Southern life. There are some improbable and sentimental moments in the story, but there are also great moments of laughter that belong to memory and a novelist's hand... Miss Lee's original characters are people to cherish in this winning first novel by a fresh writer with something significant to say, South and North. The dialogue of Miss Lee's refreshingly varied characters is a constant delight in its authenticity and swift revelation of personality. Te events connecting the Finches with the Ewell-Robinson lawsuit develop quietly and logically, unifying the plot and dramatizing the author's level-headed plea for interracial understanding... Moviegoing readers will be able to cast most of the roles very quickly, but it is no disparagement of Miss Lee's winning book to say that it could be the basis of an excellent film.
Amazon.com (ISBN 0446310786, Mass Market Paperback)"When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.... When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident. I maintain that the Ewells started it all, but Jem, who was four years my senior, said it started long before that. He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out."Set in the small Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Depression, To Kill a Mockingbird follows three years in the life of 8-year-old Scout Finch, her brother, Jem, and their father, Atticus--three years punctuated by the arrest and eventual trial of a young black man accused of raping a white woman. Though her story explores big themes, Harper Lee chooses to tell it through the eyes of a child. The result is a tough and tender novel of race, class, justice, and the pain of growing up. Like the slow-moving occupants of her fictional town, Lee takes her time getting to the heart of her tale; we first meet the Finches the summer before Scout's first year at school. She, her brother, and Dill Harris, a boy who spends the summers with his aunt in Maycomb, while away the hours reenacting scenes from Dracula and plotting ways to get a peek at the town bogeyman, Boo Radley. At first the circumstances surrounding the alleged rape of Mayella Ewell, the daughter of a drunk and violent white farmer, barely penetrate the children's consciousness. Then Atticus is called on to defend the accused, Tom Robinson, and soon Scout and Jem find themselves caught up in events beyond their understanding. During the trial, the town exhibits its ugly side, but Lee offers plenty of counterbalance as well--in the struggle of an elderly woman to overcome her morphine habit before she dies; in the heroism of Atticus Finch, standing up for what he knows is right; and finally in Scout's hard-won understanding that most people are essentially kind "when you really see them." By turns funny, wise, and heartbreaking, To Kill a Mockingbird is one classic that continues to speak to new generations, and deserves to be reread often. --Alix Wilber (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:53 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
Abebooks |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
