Tag: To Kill a Mockingbird

Top 5 Saturday: Sibling Relationships

Top 5 Saturday Sibling Relationships

The Top 5 Saturday weekly meme was created by Amanda at Devouring Books.

Rules!

  • Share your top 5 books of the current topic—these can be books that you want to read, have read and loved, have read and hated, you can do it any way you want.
  • Tag the original post (This one!)
  • Tag 5 people (I probably won’t do this bit, play along if you want)

This week’s topic is: Sibling Relationships. If the Weasley family doesn’t immediately spring to mind once you think about siblings, there might be something broken in your mind—ditto for the Pevensies. But I wouldn’t let myself use them. The more I wrote in this list, the more relationships came to mind that I don’t have space for–that’s very annoying (a lot of fun, too), I hate to leave some of these off. I don’t know why I didn’t grab sibling relationships that are more than a pair (the aforementioned groups, the Spellmans or Tropper’s Altmans would’ve worked)—I’m assuming it’s because I had one sibling myself, so I tend to think of pairs rather than 3+?

Sibling relationships are tricky to depict—they’re all a little different, but there are some typical aspects. There’s a shared history (even if individuals react pretty differently to them, and remember them differently); jealousy/rivalry—usually tempered by some sort of affection and loyalty; usually a bit of reflexive self-sacrifice (frequently malgré lui); and a kind of honesty you don’t get from anyone else.


Raistlin and Caramon Majere

from: Dragonlance Chronicles, Dragonlance Legends
by
Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman

This is the first sibling relationship that really sticks out at me (post-juvenile fiction, anyway). They need each other (in healthy and unhealthy ways), but really don’t like each other. There’s a love and a bond that’s nigh-unbreakable, don’t get me wrong, but man…Raistlin treats his brother like trash. I remember regularly being so upset with him for that (and a little bit now just thinking about it), but Caramon keeps coming back for it. He never gives up on his twin. Even when—especially when—he absolutely should. It’s a nuanced and complex relationship and is likely one that I judge many other fictional representations by.

Side note: I really need to re-read the first couple of Dragonlance trilogies.


Jack and Jill Wolcott

from: Wayward Children
by
Seanan McGuire

(art by Rovina Cai)
While I do wonder if McGuire had come back to this well one time too many in this series, there’s clearly something about this fractured relationship (huh, another set of twins, with one more to come…didn’t mean to do that) that clearly resonates with readers and the author. If there’s anything healthy in their relationship when we first meet them, it’s gone by the most recent volume—but they’re the textbook definition of inextricably linked. To their detriment, yes, but that’s beside the point. Fascinating pair.


Scout and Jem Finch

from: To Kill a Mockingbird
by
Harper Lee

Scout worships her brother (doesn’t stop her from being frustrated with him frequently) and Jem’s clearly devoted and protective of her. I’ve loved reading about these two since I first met them in Mme. Dobbs’ English class* in high school and I’ll probably love it for the rest of my life. They’re not ideal, but they’re pretty close.

* she also taught my French class, so I reflexively think of her with that title)


Doug and Clair Parker

from: How to Talk to a Widower
by
Jonathan Tropper

Alas, I don’t have a picture of them—Tropper doesn’t inspire a lot of fan art. Yeah, Doug and Clair’s relationship echoes any number of the sibling relationships in Topper’s work. This is honestly the first pair that jumped to mind when I compiled this list. The honesty, the humor, the prodding/pushing, and care between the two is one of the best parts of this novel (probably my favorite of his). Great interplay between the two. Neither Doug or Clair remind me of my sister or myself individually, but for some reason, their relationship made me think about our relationship.


Harry Dresden and Thomas Wraith

from: Dresden Files
by
Jim Butcher

(art by Mika-Blackfield)
Sure, these two weren’t aware of each other for most of their lives, so their shared history has only to do with their mother. Still, the bond, the love, the loyalty that everyone thinks of when it comes to brothers is perfectly depicted with these two. They’re probably my favorite sibling pair that’re still being written about—I just hope they both survive ’til the end.

Flashback: Pre-Release Thoughts on Go Set a Watchman

Two years ago, we were all hyped-up about the release of Go Set a Watchman — I just stumbled onto something I wrote just before the release and got to thinking about the book. I was — and remain — very mixed about it. There are some people who’ve refused to read it because of the way it was released — and I sort of wish I was one of those. But my greed for more Harper Lee got the better of me.

Anyway, I was too busy to come up with anything fresh, so I thought I’d take another look at this, see if anyone else had some memories about this (then) much-anticipated release?

Go Set a WatchmanDoing my weekly grocery shopping today, I noticed that some eager-beaver stockperson had put out Go Set a Watchman already. Now, I don’t normally buy food and books at the same place — but, c’mon! A day early, a few bucks off, how could I not?

Well, pretty easily, it turns out. The sales system wouldn’t let me purchase the book. It kept saying, “Do Not Sell.” The clerk tried every trick she knew, the manager who was innocently passing by only to get roped into helping her did, too. I asked, “Is it maybe because the book is being released tomorrow?” Light bulbs went off over their heads — yeah, that was it. Probably. It was as good a guess as any.

So, I thanked them for their efforts and went away with just the food I was supposed to get.

Still, having it in my cart — in my hot little hands got me thinking for a minute. More than a minute, actually. I don’t remember the last time I thought that much about a book before I actually, you know, read it. This was the literary equivalent to being a ticket holder to The Phantom Menace pre-release showing (yup, I had one, and I missed the show — don’t ask, it’s a long, embarrassing story with the punchline of me buying two sets of tickets to that letdown). As formative as the book was for me (and many), there’s just as many ways this could go wrong as…well, The Phantom Menace. Except, this time we’re all braced for it not being that good.

Right? I mean, no one expects another To Kill a Mockingbird, do they? It’s mostly a question of how big a let down is this going to be. Are we going to end up wishing that Lee had been dead for a few decades before this saw the light of day, so she wouldn’t have to witness the backlash? Or is it just going to be mildly disappointing? A “close, but no cigar” kind of thing.

But with it there in my shopping cart, I started to wonder. . . Dare I hope? Is there a chance that it’s actually good? After all of us wishing for decades that she’d put out a body of work as good/almost as good as Mockingbird, but resigned to reality — are we now going to be lamenting anew her small literary output?

I know reviews are starting to come in — I’ve managed to avoid them all so far (but it’s getting harder). I never bother with preview chapters of anything — they’re never enough. So all of this may be moot — I don’t know, and probably won’t until sometime Wednesday at this rate. But, I gotta tell ya, I’m nervous — with just a hint of eager anticipation.

What about you? Are you going to read it? Are you going to jump on it, or take a wait and see approach? Do you expect a big disappointment?

United States of Books – To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

It’s just not fair (and probably fixed) that the organizer of this little project got to read To Kill a Mockingbird, easily one of my favorite 2 novels of all time. I just checked, and over 3% of the posts here reference Harper Lee in some way — given the number of authors I’ve mentioned at least in passing, that’s saying something. So to have someone else write the first full-length post on this book here bothers me (and makes me wonder just what I’ve been doing the last few years that I haven’t posted about it yet). But anyway, enough of the jealous ranting — on to Laura’s post!
Welcome to the halfway point of the United States of Books! We have now reached review number twenty-five and six months of reviews. I can’t thank the team of reviewers enough and our fantastic readers. To say thanks to you all, we are giving away a $25.00 Amazon gift card for 1st place and then a copy of any of the US of Books books (winners choice) Kindle or physical copy (INT) as long as Book Depository delivers, for 2nd place.

Click here to enter

To Kill a MockingbirdTo Kill a Mockingbird

by Harper Lee

Author: Laura at 125Pages.com

4 1/2 Stars

Synopsis

Harper Lee’s Pulitzer prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep south—and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatred.

One of the best-loved stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than thirty million copies worldwide, served as the basis for an enormously popular motion picture, and was voted one of the best novels of the twentieth century by librarians across the country. A gripping, heart-wrenching, and wholly remarkable tale of coming-of-age in a South poisoned by virulent prejudice, it views a world of great beauty and savage inequities through the eyes of a young girl, as her father-a crusading local lawyer-risks everything to defend a black man unjustly accused of a terrible crime.

Review

This week takes us to Alabama with To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. EW says – “Forget the dubious sequel. Lee’s exceptional work is a perfectly contained miracle about the struggle for justice in a system built to destroy it. From Birmingham to Tuskegee, Alabama was a burning center of racial conflict, and this novel takes place right on the outskirts of that crucible.”

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee is one of the first “grown-up” books I remember reading. It was the summer before 7th grade and I was a precocious twelve-year-old. I loved that the person telling the story was a smart young girl and that she was so very different from other book narrators that I had been exposed to. I read it at least once a year and loved when it was on the book list in sophomore year, as it made the book report easy to do. As I got older, I stopped reading it as often, and as I picked it up this time realized it had been at least ten years since I had last picked it up. As I cracked the cover on my old worn copy, it was like stepping back in time to a period in my life that had long since passed.

I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.

To Kill A Mockingbird is a complex story of a young girl, six-year-old Jean Louise Finch (Scout), who lives with her lawyer and widower father Atticus and her older brother Jem. Scout and Jem, together with the neighbor boy Dill, are fascinated with their reclusive neighbor “Boo” Radley, a recluse that is never seen. They begin to spin tales about him and try to entice him outside. Meanwhile their father is assigned a case defending a black man, Tom Robinson, who has been accused of raping a young white woman. The two stories weave together in a powerful tale of race relations in a small southern town coming out of the Depression. Harper Lee crafted a tale of morality and family that still resonates today.

As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it—whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash.

Love and murder, racism and redemption, all combine to make To Kill A Mockingbird a classic that will remain read for years to come. The way that Harper Lee combined wide-eyed youthful curiosity with the recollections of a grown woman make this a very interesting read. The style of the story telling is unique and matches the very detailed plot. The world created and described by Scout is vivid and real, and I could picture the scenes unfolding quite clearly.

Now that I have rediscovered Lee and Mockingbird, I regret ever leaving her world. A Pulitzer Prize winner, To Kill A Mockingbird is a book that well deserves its accolades as well as its criticisms. It does feature many difficult topics and language that in today’s world is considered unacceptable. I believe stories such as this still need to be told as we need to remember what used to be commonplace. I will now try to plan an annual re-read to return to this fascinating world. And, as said so well by Scout, “Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”

Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee

Go Set a WatchmanGo Set a Watchman

by Harper Lee
Hardcover, 278 pg.

HarperCollins, 2015

Read: August 14 – 15, 2015

Maycomb did not have a paved street until 1935, courtesy of F. D. Roosevelt, and even then it was not exactly a street that was paved. For some reason the President decided that a clearing from the front door of the Maycomb Grammar School to the connecting two ruts adjoining the school property was in need of improvement, it was improved accordingly, resulting in skinned knees and cracked crania for the children and a proclamation from the principal that nobody was to play Pop-the-Whip on the pavement. Thus the seeds of states’ rights were sown in the hearts of Jean Louise’s generation.

I don’t know what to think. I just do not. It’s that simple. I probably shouldn’t even be blogging about this one, but I feel compelled to.*

There are so many things that’d help me know what to think about this; for example: 1. if there wasn’t the cloud of controversy over the publication — did Lee really want it published? Is she of sound enough mind to make that choice now? and so on. 2. If there’d been a third book of hers published, it’d be easier to know which is the aberration — Mockingbird or Watchman (because there is a clear qualitative distinction) — it’d be easier to cut her some slack if we knew this wasn’t her typical work.

Am I glad I read this? I think so. There are phrases, sentences, paragraphs, vignettes, scenes, that I relished. I do think I like the story of Jean Louise here. I think I appreciate Atticus as father, not necessarily Atticus as a man making certain choices. I’m pretty sure I like Jean Louise’s Uncle Jack.

But there’s bits about this novel that just confound me. Some of the speechifying seems so out of place (and I won’t get into what I think of the points of them). A lot of the speechifying makes it seem like an unfinished draft — where Lee could’ve come back, fleshed it out, edited it and made the same points through dialogue, not monologues.

Maybe in time, after weeks/months of thought, a few re-reads, some distance, I’ll have an opinion about the book that I can stand behind. Right now, best I can manage is a shrug.

—–

* And because I’m really close to having blogged about every novel this year, haven’t missed one since February — and I don’t want to break my streak.

—–

? ? ? ? ?

The Most Useless Page Ever?

Is there anyone holding this book in their hands that needs to be given this information? Why waste the ink?
Also by Harper Lee
“Oh, To Kill a Mockingbird, huh? Never heard of it. Wonder if it’s any good.”

Obviously, there are people who haven’t heard of the Mockingbird — but none of them are going to be tempted to pick up Go Set a Watchman.

Now, the question is, once the initial furor/money-grab over this new book has died down, are there going to be future printings of Mockingbird printed with an “Also by Harper Lee” page? And if so, will the font size be legible?

At this point, I’ve got a little less than a hundred pages to go in the book, and I have no idea what I think of it. Individual sentences or paragraphs? I have very strong opinions about some of them.

But the novel?

I just don’t know.

Pre-Release Thoughts on Go Set a Watchman

Go Set a WatchmanDoing my weekly grocery shopping today, I noticed that some eager-beaver stockperson had put out Go Set a Watchman already. Now, I don’t normally buy food and books at the same place — but, c’mon! A day early, a few bucks off, how could I not?

Well, pretty easily, it turns out. The sales system wouldn’t let me purchase the book. It kept saying, “Do Not Sell.” The clerk tried every trick she knew, the manager who was innocently passing by only to get roped into helping her did, too. I asked, “Is it maybe because the book is being released tomorrow?” Light bulbs went off over their heads — yeah, that was it. Probably. It was as good a guess as any.

So, I thanked them for their efforts and went away with just the food I was supposed to get.

Still, having it in my cart — in my hot little hands got me thinking for a minute. More than a minute, actually. I don’t remember the last time I thought that much about a book before I actually, you know, read it. This was the literary equivalent to being a ticket holder to The Phantom Menace pre-release showing (yup, I had one, and I missed the show — don’t ask, it’s a long, embarrassing story with the punchline of me buying two sets of tickets to that letdown). As formative as the book was for me (and many), there’s just as many ways this could go wrong as…well, The Phantom Menace. Except, this time we’re all braced for it not being that good.

Right? I mean, no one expects another To Kill a Mockingbird, do they? It’s mostly a question of how big a let down is this going to be. Are we going to end up wishing that Lee had been dead for a few decades before this saw the light of day, so she wouldn’t have to witness the backlash? Or is it just going to be mildly disappointing? A “close, but no cigar” kind of thing.

But with it there in my shopping cart, I started to wonder. . . Dare I hope? Is there a chance that it’s actually good? After all of us wishing for decades that she’d put out a body of work as good/almost as good as Mockingbird, but resigned to reality — are we now going to be lamenting anew her small literary output?

I know reviews are starting to come in — I’ve managed to avoid them all so far (but it’s getting harder). I never bother with preview chapters of anything — they’re never enough. So all of this may be moot — I don’t know, and probably won’t until sometime Wednesday at this rate. But, I gotta tell ya, I’m nervous — with just a hint of eager anticipation.

What about you? Are you going to read it? Are you going to jump on it, or take a wait and see approach? Do you expect a big disappointment?

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