Posted on 04/06/2007 5:32:09 AM PDT by urtax$@work
If there's one book you should read before you die, it's To Kill a Mockingbird. That's not my opinion. Apparently I was sick back in ninth grade when every other American kid read Harper Lee's novel of racism, moral courage and coming of age in 1930s Alabama. I read it for the first time only this week and have my misgivings.
But according to the Guardian newspaper's Web site, a 2006 poll of librarians — British librarians — put To Kill a Mockingbird atop the list of books every adult should read before they shuffle off. Ahead of the Bible. Ahead of Huckleberry Finn and Pride and Prejudice and even Harry "the Franchise" Potter.
Go to link to see rest of article: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/life/4691912.html
(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
For me Huckleberry Finn towers over the rest.
I think she worked seriously on two maybe three more novels but never felt they were up to the standard of Mockingbird.
I’m for Gone With The Wind... and over the years my relationship to each character has changed. My favorites are now my least and my least... I fear I’ve grown to be like them. A truly remarkable book.
Bingo.
So what's its appeal?
Its appeal is that it upholds the power of the new elite.
What is more important is what the children won't be taught: they won't be taught the overwhelming majority of victims of racist rape are white, they won't be taught to question why there has never been a hearing in our ever apologizing congress on the phenomenon, or the connection between the institutionally dishonest way the newspapers handle racial violence against whites and the casual effect that has on the crimes, and they won't be taught the connection between those crimes and the politics of the sort of people that put this book on the top of reading lists.
The inclusion of this book on the top of a British list is interesting. The American "Civil Rights" morality play is as much part of their "civic religion" as it is of ours, and the elite there have been trying to reproduce it through immigration. It's just another example of how American leftist morality, spread through the American mass media, totally dominates the West. I've said before, multiculturalism is an American poison spread throughout the West by the American media.
So we re-read the good ones. So many books, so little time...
Moby Dick is one of, if not the most, unreadable of classic novels. Most adults who have claimed to have read it are either literature students or they read an abridged copy.
When Moby Dick was adapted to film in 1956 it was no small wonder that John Huston and Ray Bradbury struggled with it so much. I recommend Bradbury’s Green Shadows, White Whale for a great biographical account of adapting the book, along with some insight into Huston (they hated each other) and a fascinating view of Ireland in the 50’s.
I think you are right about life experience. It took some brutals one for me to understand the book.
I liked Huckleberry Finn as a teenager, when we were assigned it...I liked most of the assigned reading, in fact.
But you are right, today Huckleberry Finn towers above alot of the other stuff we had to read, which includes Mockingbird, though I admit to not having reread that one...or Moby Dick either(!).
One thing about assigned reading in the early 60’s, most of the books were good reads at least. My kids were in high school in the 90’s; seeing the tedious stuff they were assigned, I couldn’t help thinking that the English department was doing its best to make the kids hate reading forever.
Sad to say, I have never read Huckleberry Finn. I will have to make it a point to do so.
Yes, it’s very good. Nice to see you, Carton.
I agree a lot of the time. There's enough RL tragedy without using more of it for entertainment.
I loved it when I was a kid & I still do today. She did a fantastic job of capturing a child’s point of view.
PBS recently had a special on the American novel which I watched some of, but the program was simply not good enough to hold my attention. At their website, they have a list compiled by "experts". It is incredible that Sinclair Lewis's Main Street is not listed. Neither is McTeague by Frank Norris a personal favorite of mine. I have reread both in the past couple of years, and in my opinion they both stand up.
I’ve read Moby Dick in its entirety and enjoyed it from start to finish. It’s perfectly readable. You have to be on his wavelength.
I bet you that Lee had one or two more. OTOH, I’m not very convinced that Clancy did.
How are you Sam?
And he is still cranking them out.
He is a writer that needs an editor. And someone to tell him not to give away the story in the first 15 pages.
I guess as long as the money keeps rolling in, he has to keep writing them, even if they’re mediocre. Or less.
I’m quite well. And you?
They are getting worse.
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