Last week I read and reviewed To Kill A Mockingbird, easily naming this as one of my now all time favorite reads. The book was so well written, so smart, so engaging…. I just fell in love with it and I am so impressed with Harper Lee’s writing style and the story that she tells.
After finishing the book, I knew I wanted to see the movie and was lucky enough to find it at one of our few remaining video rental stores (uhhh yeah… whats with all the Red Boxes anyway?). I brought the movie with us camping this weekend and watched it with my husband as well as with our company which included two young girls ages 9 and 12. It is fair to say that i was actually a little jealous that they were able to experience this show at the ages they are where I am currently in my 40’s and seeing it for the first time.
The movie was… well, wonderful. Gregory Peck made an incredible Aticus and listening to him was just as I had pictured he would be, evenly tempered, wise in his speech, and gentle in his manner. It was wonderful to watch the book come alive before my eyes, and having just finished the book I enjoyed watching how it all played out on the screen.
As in all movies, parts of the book are lost. One of my favorite parts in the book was the end when Scout is walking home in the turkey costume and while that is in the movie, they cut out a lot of the story behind that part of the book, which I missed.
Over all I would highly recommend that everyone first read the book – you will not be sorry, and secondly, watch the movie, both are worth your time and you will forever have this wonderful piece of culture known as To Kill A Mockingbird.
Did you know that To Kill A Mockingbird was a banned book?
Fact: Challenged in Eden Valley, Minn. (1977) and temporarily banned due to words “damn” and “whore lady” used in the novel.Challenged in the Vernon Verona Sherill, N.Y School District (1980) as a “filthy, trashy novel:” Challenged at the Warren, Ind.Township schools (1981) because the book does “psychological damage to the positive integration process ” and “represents institutionalized racism under the guise of good literature:” After unsuccessfully banning Lee’s novel, three black parents resigned from the township human relations advisory council. Challenged in the Waukegan, III. School District (1984) because the novel uses the word “nigger.” Challenged in the Kansas City, Mo. junior high schools (1985). Challenged at the Park Hill, Mo. Junior High School (1985) because the novel “contains profanity and racial slurs:” Retained on a supplemental eighth grade reading list in the Casa Grande, Ariz. Elementary School District (1985), despite the protests by black parents and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People who charged the book was unfit for junior high use. Challenged at the Santa Cruz, Calif. Schools (1995) because of its racial themes. Removed from the Southwood High School Library in Caddo Parish, La. (1995) because the book’s language and content were objectionable. Challenged at the Moss Point, Miss. School District (1996) because the novel contains a racial epithet. Banned from the Lindale,Tex. advanced placement English reading list (1996) because the book “conflicted with the values of the community.” Challenged by a Glynn County, Ga. (2001) school board member because of profanity. The novel was retained. Returned to the freshman reading list at Muskogee, Okla. High School (2001) despite complaints over the years from black students and parents about racial slurs in the text. Challenged in the Normal, ILL Community High Schools sophomore literature class (2003) as being degrading to African Americans. Challenged at the Stanford Middle School in Durham, N.C. (2004) because the 1961 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel uses the word “nigger.”
Good morning and happy Tuesday! Initially my plan was to do the “Hit List” this morning which is about all the great finds I discover while reading the Monday What Are You Reading participant blogs. HOWEVER… that’s just going to have to wait until tomorrow.
We arrived home yesterday afternoon from the cabin and when I finally sat down to answer emails and read the memes I realized there was no way I was going to finish them in one sitting. SO, that will be continued later today and instead today I have a couple other “morning chat worthy” topics.
Camping for the weekend with friends was wonderful. We watched a few movies, ate way too much food, played board games, searched for agates by Lake Superior, had a campfire and laughed a lot. I even got in a little reading time so The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and I are moving along quite nicely.
Al and I at the campfire. I know - a rare sightling of my hubby but there he is. 😀
Inside the cabin playing a game called STARE. there are three of our guests: Amy, Morgan, and Chad
Upon arriving home and starting to unpack guess where I found my dog Elmo?
On another note, The Game On Diet is game on again! I played in August and started out strong and then about the third week tapered off…. life got busy and yeah….. however, a group of us wanted to continue and as I have not reached my goals yet I am on again and we start today. I will get back to updating the journal (right side bar) as well.
You may remember my goal was to fit into these pants again.
AND finally – there were two book challenges I really want to be a part of and I have become behind on both but plan on catching up. One was from Trish over at Hey Lady! Watcha Readin’? She started a nicely paced challenge with The Handmaid’s Tale and I want to participate as this is a book I have meant to read like FOREVER! I have to catch up but I will. 😀
AND Amanda from The Zen Leaf has a challenge going for Charles Dicken’s Bleak House. Uhhh…. yeah. MONSTER read. 914 pages. In fact I may need to drink Monster to get through this…. and I hate energy drinks. 😛 This is another one being read slowly so I want to give it a try.
So that’s what is currently happening over here. Hope you all had a wonderful Labor day Weekend. Cant wait to catch up with all of you!
It’s Monday! What Are You Reading, is where we gather to share what we have read this past week and what we plan to read this week. It is a great way to network with other bloggers, see some wonderful blogs, and put new titles on your reading list.
I love being a part of this and I hope you do too! As part of this weekly meme I love to encourage you all to go and visit the others participating in this meme. I offer a weekly contest for those who visit 10 or more of the Monday Meme participants and leave a comment. You receive one entry for every 10 comments, just come back here and tell me how many in the comment area.
Well, I have a couple of books I want to catch up on so I am going to keep it light and see what happens. I am still working my way through The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and I hope to start this one this week:
Releasing this week, ROOM has already been making an impact on the reviews. I look forward to sinking into this book.
I am really anxious to see what you are reading this week. Fall seems to bring some new titles and new reads to the table and I for one am looking forward to what the rest of this year will bring. Please enter your link to your Monday What Are You Reading post where it says “click here”. See you soon! 😀
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Note: I am still out-of-town until Monday afternoon but will respond to all comments and visit all meme participants upon my return. 😀
Nujood of Yamen was sold to her husband when she was the rip old age of ten. The man she was married to was three times her age. The promise was made to her family that her husband would not touch her until she became a woman. A promise he did not keep.
Nujood makes a daring escape and in a voice beyond her young years, she shares her story in these pages from the marriage to seeking help from the courts, doing the unheard of in her country. Nujood’s courage and her defiance towards her family and Yemeni customs, became an inspiration to other young girls in the Middle East.
Her story will break your heart.
As in many of the books I read, I have fellow book bloggers to thank for this one. I picked up on this book somewhere out in the blogosphere and this one refused to let go until I had read it. I always take read like this to heart as having walked the streets of Honduras and seeing young girls around the ages of 12 heavy with pregnancy, I can all too easy recall what it felt like to see these children growing up way too fast. This feeling rushed over me again as I read this book.
Nujood’s story within these pages is short, I read the book in a couple of hours. Yet don’t be fooled. Each page is powerfully packed with the truth of her situation where in some cases what I read felt like I was being punched in the gut. It literally took my breath away. Which I think makes the story even stronger when you read about this young girl deciding that enough was enough and she goes and fights for her rights, in a country where ever her own mother tells her that she must obey her husband even when Nujood tells her what he is doing to her.
Be ready for a book that will take you through cruelty, abuse,hope, courage, and triumph…. be ready for a rollercoaster of emotions.
I have seen quite a few posts about Fall lately…. shoot, I have posted a few myself. It’s not like I want to give up on summer but for central Minnesota, we can feel it in the air. Fall doesn’t mean there will be no more beautiful sweltering days…. no, I still think we will be getting those over the next 6 weeks, in fact I look forward to them. No matter what you think of Fall – pro, con, undecided – there is one thing we as book lovers must agree on….
There are some GGGGOOOOOOOODDDDDDD books coming our way over the next couple months.
ROOM. Oh I have waited to read this book and it is on my reading list for next week. CAN NOT WAIT.
I am not a huge fan of Nicholas Sparks (although he has had some pretty good releases as of late) however – look at this cover. I mean LOOK at this cover. I could frame it. I might frame it. This book becomes available on September 14th.
Dennis Lehane. Need I say more? I mean we are talking Mystic River and Shutter Island. Both books that while I can’t say much for either of the movies, the books blew me away. November 2 is the release day.
I know there are more lovely books coming out soon…. and I am sure I have missed many that wold be on my list as well. This is where you come in. What books are you looking forward to being released yet this year?
Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ’em,
but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.
Meet Jean Louise Finch, but do not call her that. Call her Scout. Scout is 8. She lives with her slightly older brother Jem and her father Atticus who is a lawyer. As they hang out and play in their neighborhood they become increasingly infatuated with a man named Boo Radley, who is 30 years old and has not been seen out of his home where he lives with for family for more years than Scout has been alive. The imagination of Scout, Jem, and a boy named Dill get the best of them as they imagine the monster that must be Boo Radley.
Scout’s father Atticus becomes a defense attorney for a black man who is falsely accused of raping a white woman in a time when that is just acceptable in the eyes of the towns people. Scout and Jem become targets at school because of this and as the story progresses, the children see first hand the prejudices around them.
A book wrapped around the deep south, interesting and delightful characters such as Scout, Jem, and the infamous Boo, along with a father named Atticus and how his decision to defend the innocent, makes for all that is To Kill A Mockingbird.
When this book came up for the 50 Anniversary I knew I had to read it this year. I thought I was one of the last people on earth who had not read To Kill A Mockingbird, but as the conversations came up about this book, I discovered there were a lot of people who have not read this book.
You know what else I discovered?
We are all missing something remarkable by not reading this. I was so impressed by the writingof this book. I can not stress that enough, Harper Lee is an amazing writer who writes with words that are just as relevant today as they were in 1960 when the book was first written.
The sixth grade seemed to please him from the beginning: he went through a brief Egyptian Period that baffled me – he tried to walk flat a great deal, sticking one arm in front of him and one in back of him, putting one foot behind the other. He declared Egyptians walked that way; I said if they did I didn’t see how they got anything done, but Jem said they accomplished more than the Americans ever did, they invented toilet paper and perpetual embalming, and asked where would we be today if they hadn’t? Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I’d have the facts. ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 7
The words are poetic, rhythmic, I can’t even tell you how many times I was in awe of the writing, smiling to myself at how brilliantly written each line is. Kicking myself again for thinking this would be another wordy hard to read classic that would no doubt give me a head ache before it was done. I can not wait to see the movie!
When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness’ sake. But don’t make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion quicker than adults, and evasion simply muddles ’em. ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 9
In the end, I feel it is safe to say that this book just reached into the elite group that holds the spots of the best books I have ever read. Everyone needs to read this book.
I received my review copy of this book from Harper Perennial
Good morning. A cloudy gloomy day here in central Minnesota. Perfect reading weather that is for sure! We are leaving this afternoon for the cabin for the weekend with friends. It will be a nice break after this week and before the hectic week I will coming back to with work and training and my assistants last day.
Yup. This calls for a cabin getaway.
I am hopeful the weather is a little more promising up north for the weekend. The friends we are going with have two daughters ages 12 and 9 so they will want to get out and explore. I don’t really care how much activity I am involved in – but I will be taking The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo with me as that is our September book club read.
I had mentioned that when I read Mockingjay I was following it up with to Kill A Mockingbird. Mission accomplished. So later today will be the review of To Kill A Mockingbird, and I am hoping to stop at the video store today and see if they have the movie To Kill A Mockingbird as I have never seen it and now is the time.
I hope you will all have a wonderful weekend. Posts will come up throughout the weekend as well as on Sunday the Monday, What Are You Reading post will go up as always. Meanwhile, I will leave you with this little mockingbird experience. 😀
Earlier this summer I RAVED about a book I had read AND an author I had met while in New York for BEA. The book, Twenty Boy Summer, was such a fun read and if you read my review you know I gushed…. and gushed…. and maybe gushed a bit more.
I had kept in touch with Sarah Ockler… anxiously anticipating her next book and around her busy life she found time to chat with me a bit about the first book, the second book…. and well… why now just see for yourself.
Please welcome Sarah Ockler.
Sarah Ockler
Well Sarah, I am so glad to have you here today. I enjoyed Twenty Boy Summer immensely and I know many of the Book Journey readers did as well. Thanks for chatting with me today. How do you take your coffee?
Sarah: Soy milk, no sugar. If I’m out in a coffee shop, I’ll usually just do a plain soy latte.
Twenty boy summer was your first novel, how long would you say it took to write from the first idea, to the moment you had a publisher?
Sarah: From idea to book deal? 8 years. But it’s not as scary as it sounds!
The idea for Twenty Boy Summer started developing a few years before I actually started writing it. I was working for the National Donor Family Council, an organization that supports families whose loved ones died and donated organs and tissues. I met so many grieving teens, and somewhere inside, I knew that if I ever wrote a book, I wanted to share a part of those stories. 4 years later, I started writing. 3 years after that, balancing a full-time job, graduate school, and fear that prevented me from committing to writing a book, I finished. 3 weeks later, I had an agent. Less than 3 months after that, we sold the book. So really, once I accepted the fact that I was a writer, and that I *had* to finish the book, it all came together very quickly.
Wow! I almost fell out of my chair when you said 8 years! Would you say that time period was exciting, frustrating, or all of the above?
Sarah: Mostly exciting, but there are always moments of frustration with any creative pursuit. Some days the ideas just don’t flow as well, or the story doesn’t seem to make sense anymore, or the self-doubt creeps in. But overall, it was an exhilarating time, and I wouldn’t trade any of the ups and downs! It’s all part of the process of writing a book.
I have heard some authors say they do not read reviews on their book. Do you?
Sarah: I read reviews when they first start coming out, but after the book has been on the shelves a while, I try to stay away. I like to know how the book is being received by readers, and I also like to think about what I can do better for the next book. At the same time, reading reviews can be damaging, and they’re not a real indication (or definition) of a book’s success. What one person hates about a book, another person loves. What one person loves, everyone else hates. Some people will give a book a negative review just because they don’t agree with a character’s choices. Others will love it because they identify so strongly with that character. Others will love only the writing style, but hate the setting. Before I sold my book, I heard this advice from pubbed authors all the time, but I didn’t get it until recently: “Don’t read reviews. The best thing an author can do for her career is to just write the next book.”
That sounds to me like it was good advice. What made you choose to write YA books?
Sarah: I like to say that YA chose me. 🙂 It’s just the voice in which my stories come out. I think it’s partly because I was so expressive in my journals during high school — in many cases, they were like a best friend that never judged me, never scolded me, never dropped me. The issues, the emotion, the choices — all of those things from my own teen years really stayed with me. The first time I took a YA writing class, I read contemporary young adult authors like Sarah Dessen, Deb Caletti, Laurie Halse Anderson, and I knew that’s what I was meant to
do. I can’t imagine not writing YA!
I felt you really tapped into the teen vein. When Anna and Frankie were going through the hard times, I hurt along with them. I think this is a real gift for YA authors. How do you feel you create such realistic young adult characters?
Sarah: I think it goes back again to my own teen years. It’s such a time of intense emotion, and it’s always stayed with me. When I write teen characters, I basically revisit high school. I remember what it was like. I put myself in the character’s shoes and think, what would I have done here? What would my best friend have done? What about my opposite, or someone I could never relate to? What did that breakup feel like? What about that fight with my parents? What about when that person died? What about that awesome party? Then, I observe teens interacting today (not in a stalker way. Usually not anyway. 🙂 ) and see how the dynamics are, the language, the cues, the clothes. And then I mix it all up and write it. 🙂
I am so excited about your next book coming out in December of this year,Fixing Delilah. Can you tell us a little about this book?
Sarah: Fixing Delilah is very much a mother-daughter book. I remember having such a difficult, complicated relationship with my mother back then — I hated her. I loved her. I wanted to be just like her. I wanted to be nothing like her. I remember thinking that she must’ve been born a grown-up, because she clearly had no idea what it was like to be a teenager. I really wanted to explore that through Delilah and her family. The story opens with Delilah and her corporate workaholic mom
traveling to Vermont to settle her grandmother’s estate. After a
family fight 8 years earlier, no one had spoken to or about the
grandmother, and now that they’re heading back to the house after her death, Delilah struggles with her memories of what happened and the role her mother and aunts played in the estrangement. The story explores generations of women and all of the secrets, hopes, and fears mothers and daughters keep from one another, and how the assumptions and misconceptions can really tear us apart. There’s also a really cute boy in the mix, but I’ll let readers meet him on their own. 🙂
Oh I can not wait! I have drooling over this book since I seen the cover, and that I know more about it, I am putting the release date on my calendar. What is coming up for you?
Sarah: I’m currently working on another YA story about one girl’s struggle to find and follow her dreams, to see beauty in the places we call home, and to finally discover what it means to be part of something bigger than ourselves. Unlike Twenty Boy Summer and Fixing Delilah, this one is set smack in the middle of winter. 🙂 More details soon!
It is tradition that I ask each author I chat with to share a little known fact about themselves.
Sarah: I always wanted to play the clarinet, but when it came time to pick instruments in 4th grade, the band conductor told me that since I’d probably need braces, I couldn’t play clarinet. Devastated, I picked the violin instead. I was actually pretty good, winning competitions and playing in the all county orchestra. But I always secretly longed to play the clarinet. I never ended up needing braces, but you know who did? The lead clarinet. Didn’t seem to interfere with her lead chair status in the least.
I quit violin in high school, but every once in a while I pick it up
again. I totally suck at it now. 🙂
Thank you Sarah for your time! If you are ever in Minnesota give me a shout!
Me and Sarah Ockler, May 2010
Readers, you can find Sarah Ockler at her website, Sarah Ockler: Making Stuff Up. Writing It Down. and at the lovely new website The Comtemps which is a group of YA Authors who are passionate about realistic fiction. Check this spot out there are author stories of the teen years, special events, book and they even have a fun challenge going on!
Coffee Cup and I have been up for about an hour. Between letting the dogs out for their morning jaunt in the back yard and catching up on my emails before I go to work… I have come to admit something I fight every year. Summer has gone again.
I felt it the last few days as I stand on the deck in the morning and the mornings are cool. You can actually smell it in the air. If you can smell crispness, this is the scent. Then I sit down at my laptop and see an email from Barnes and Noble titled “A Sad Farewell to Beach Reads”.
*sigh* it must be true.
I did enjoy a nice run with summery light reads, beachy topics and quite a few YA reads, especially after I returned from New York and BEA in May.This time of year, and I have mentioned it before in recent posts, takes on a different read for me. A heartier read. I am drawn to larger books that will draw me into characters that I do not so easily want to let go of.
This was the picture that went with the B & N email:
The only one of these I have read at this time is The Passage and I have to say I would agree with them here that I know this book will make my 2010 Best Books of the year list. I would like to read Matterhorn and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks has been on TBR since Kim from Sophisticated Dorkiness told me about it over breakfast one morning in New York.
So how about you – are any of these on your wish list or you read them. Do you agree that these are must reads?
On a separate note I had mentioned yesterday on having a tough day on Tuesday. My Grandfather passed away that morning. He had a long, good life, living to the age of 94. He had his health and lived on his own all the way to a couple of weeks ago when he broke his hip and things just went rapidly down hill from there. Thank you for those on Twitter and here who shared their condolences, many of you sending kind thoughts and payers my way without even knowing why I took a little pause in my Morning Meanderings yesterday and then moved on.
I look at the wonderful bloggers and book lovers I have had the privilege to meet either in real life or through chatting on this little blog and I have to smile.
It is 1886 and Charlotte Gleason is on her way from England to New York with turmoil in her heart. She is to marry a rich American and never be in want of anything – a man who she has never met. In a panic she switched identities with her maid, Dora.
For Dora this is a chance of a lifetime, thrust into mansions and pretty gowns…. yet she is tormented by being found out….
For Charlotte it means giving up financial security, but she is willing to take the risk. What starts as a whim of a spoiled rich girl soon becomes a test of survival, and beyond Charlotte’s darkest nightmares as her “adventure” turns into something else.
And what of the man in New York?
I have enjoyed Nancy Moser’s writing from the first time I read The Seat Beside me and The Invitation series. Books that I read years ago, but was reminded of when I opened this book, like being reminded of old friends.
Lately, as the mornings become a little crisper and the scent of fall is in the air, I have been craving Historical Fiction. Odd? Maybe, but it seems as the seasons change, so do my reading habits. Masquerade filled that craving with its descriptions of England and early New York.
Well written and well paced, I had memories of Titanic, not only for my love (LOVE!) of the movie, but for the time the girls travel to America – and their choices become somewhat of a disaster. I enjoyed reading about the changes in both women, Dora finding that she has a bit more elegance than she had thought, and Lottie (who comes off as extremely snobby and spoiled) has a soft spot in her heart for children.
As I read through the tangled web the two girls have created by their choices, author Nancy Moser pulls God into the mix. Even through the blunders and mistakes on both sides, God provides and I find myself closing the last page feeling satisfied and warm inside, for a cool Fall morning.
After finishing the book, I knew I wanted to see the movie and was lucky enough to find it at one of our few remaining video rental stores (uhhh yeah… whats with all the Red Boxes anyway?). I brought the movie with us camping this weekend and watched it with my husband as well as with our company which included two young girls ages 9 and 12. It is fair to say that i was actually a little jealous that they were able to experience this show at the ages they are where I am currently in my 40’s and seeing it for the first time.
listening to him was just as I had pictured he would be, evenly tempered, wise in his speech, and gentle in his manner. It was wonderful to watch the book come alive before my eyes, and having just finished the book I enjoyed watching how it all played out on the screen.
Over all I would highly recommend that everyone first read the book – you will not be sorry, and secondly, watch the movie, both are worth your time and you will forever have this wonderful piece of culture known as To Kill A Mockingbird.
Book Journey 