Tag Archives: authors: harper lee

Go Set A Watchman

fiction January 26, 2016 Leave a comment

In a very short period of time, my life went basically haywire – in a good way, but haywire all the same. Going to try to get back to this now, as I never stopped reading, I just stopped writing about what I was reading. So let’s begin, shall we?

Harper Lee’s Go Set A Watchman was my book event of the summer. I was very excited about it, and was thrilled to find it at my door on July 14th when I got home from work.

Due to the fact that I am now an adult with a job, unlike when the new Harry Potter books used to go out, it took me a couple of weeks to read. I wanted to finish my other book, and then I couldn’t sit home all day and read the book like I really wanted to.

For the record, there are some spoilers here.

I liked the book, but it was bittersweet.

Intellectually, I knew Go Set A Watchman was not a sequel but a first draft of the beloved To Kill A Mockingbird, but it was difficult for me to not read it as one.

Watchman, like Mockingbird, was a coming of age story, except in this version, Scout is 26 and nobody calls her Scout anymore, they call her Jean Louise. She’s dating Hank, and by the way, Jem dropped dead of a bad heart several years earlier.

The South is going through the Civil Rights era, and Scout is visiting from New York. Returning home, she finds all that fun white southern talk going on that makes everyone’s skin crawl.

Atticus, her hero, is also doing some of the talking, which shocks and disappoints Scout.

I found this version of Atticus very disappointing myself. He uses all those polite but flawed and retrospectively repulsive arguments about how negros shouldn’t be allowed to vote and what not “for their own good.”

There’s a point to all this, which I won’t reveal here, but the point is a bit of a let down, although one that does make sense, considering what we know about Scout.

There was a lot made of how this book was “discovered” and whether or not Harper Lee (who is not all there mentally anymore, and her sister, who protected her from a lot of outside influence passed away) was exploited in the publishing of this novel by any one of the people around her, since she said she’d never publish again and had held true to this for 50 years.

Naturally, I don’t want any little old lady exploited for money, but I don’t think there’s much left to say about the issue since the book’s already out.

All in all, I enjoyed Watchman, but not as much as Mockingbird. Some things you publish right the first time.

Favorite Authors

reading habits July 22, 2015 Leave a comment

Ernest Hemingway’s birthday was yesterday, and it isn’t a secret that Hemingway is one of my favorite authors. I’ve read several books by him, but not all of them.

This got me to thinking:

Can your favorite author(s) really be your favorite author(s) if you haven’t read all his/her books?

I have read five of Hemingway’s books – A Farewell To Arms, For Whom The Bell Tolls, The Sun Also Rises, The Old Man and the Sea and a compilation of all his short stories. I have a couple of his others that I haven’t gotten to yet. I didn’t even like The Old Man and the Sea. No joke, I hated it. I still consider Hemingway one of my favorites.

F. Scott Fitzgerald is another of my favorites. I haven’t read all his books either. I have read The Great Gatsby, This Side of Paradise, and The Beautiful and Damned. I have a couple of others too that I haven’t read yet.

I’ve read two of Shirley Jackson’s books and one short story, and BOOM, she’s one of my favorites…even though I haven’t read all her stuff either.

I’ve read only part of Daphne DuMaurier’s collection. The same goes for Stephen King, Dave Barry, Agatha Christie, and Harper Lee (at least for the next few days).

The only of my favorite authors I’ve read ALL of is J.K. Rowling/Robert Galbraith.

So, my question stands. Can your favorite author(s) be your favorites if you haven’t read their whole collection? What if you hated part of it (like me, with Hemingway)?

I don’t have a conclusion on this one. If anyone has any thoughts, I would love to hear them.

“Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ’em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird…”

fiction, news February 4, 2015 Leave a comment

BOOK NERDS! Surely you’ve heard by now that Harper Lee, author of beloved high school staple To Kill A Mockingbird, is publishing another book this summer?

WELL SHE IS.

This new novel, to be titled Go Set a Watchman, was the original manuscript she wrote prior to Mockingbird, but was scrapped when her editor told her to write the whole novel from young!Scout’s perspective, rather than adult!Scout’s perspective (which is when Watchman is set). Yes, Watchman is almost a sequel to Mockingbird, except it was actually written first, and it focuses on adult!Scout and her relationship with her aging father as well as the turmoil of race relations in the 1950s.

No, I have no idea what the title means! Am I still excited? YES!

There are some questions as to why Harper Lee decided to publish now – the main concern seeming to be that someone (her lawyer or agent or whoever) took advantage of her. Her lawyer supposedly found the manuscript going through Lee’s archives.

The New York Times wrote a more detailed piece on it here. The Times also put online their original review of To Kill A Mockingbird. You can take a look at that here.

This was one of the books that I loved in high school, early on. Before I quit listening to my English teachers (sophomore year) when I read books, books we read at school were hard to enjoy.  My friends and I were always sad that we had to read all the plays of Oedipus but there was no Mockingbird follow up.

NOW THERE WILL BE! I can hardly wait for July, this is like when the new Harry Potter books used to come out!

Finally, from Buzzfeed.

12 Beautifully Profound Quotes From To Kill A Mockingbird.