# To Kill A Mockingbird Turns 50 ...



## speedmaster (May 27, 2008)




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## Epaminondas (Oct 19, 2009)

"*To Kill a Mockingbird*. It endorses the obvious, and congratulates the reader for agreeing with the endorsement. It's America's most overrated book..."

https://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703561604575283354059763326.html


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## tocqueville (Nov 15, 2009)

Stuff and nonsense. It's a great book. Perhaps not up to some people's "literary standards," but whatever. What books has the reviewer written?


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## CuffDaddy (Feb 26, 2009)

It's not as though the choice is between being one of the 10 greatest books of all time and being garbage. Is it overrated? Possibly, but that doesn't mean it's not still a very good book.


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## tocqueville (Nov 15, 2009)

CuffDaddy said:


> It's not as though the choice is between being one of the 10 greatest books of all time and being garbage. Is it overrated? Possibly, but that doesn't mean it's not still a very good book.


That's a fair assessment. Well put.


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## MikeDT (Aug 22, 2009)

Isn't this thread just a bit OT to be in the 'Fashion' forum? Would the 'White Tie' forum be more appropriate for discussing literature?


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## tocqueville (Nov 15, 2009)

It's trad. We're all wearing tweed 3/2 coats and trying to impress our professors before we cross the street to Mory's and get trashed.


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## Andy (Aug 25, 2002)

And all these years I've been looking for the brand -- _Tequila Mockingbird_!

Fortunately I know it well! My wife taught the book in her English Literature classes and the movie was classic!

And *MikeDT*, your are right, I'll move this to the White Tie Forum.
*White Tie*
A discussion of music, theatre, opera, literature, cinema, the arts!​ (remember when visiting that Forum to dress appropriately)!


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## Starch (Jun 28, 2010)

CuffDaddy said:


> It's not as though the choice is between being one of the 10 greatest books of all time and being garbage.


Put me down among those who rate it somewhere in between these two, though considerably closer to the 10-greatest than it is to garbage. I will boldly declare that it is Harper Lee's best work, though.



> trying to impress our professors before we cross the street to Mory's


With a discussion of "To Kill a Mockingbird"? I'm not saying nobody ever wrote a paper on it or anything, but if it was on the reading list for an English class in my day, that's news to me. Harper Lee ain't no Thomas Pynchon. I think it's a lot more likely to pop up on junior high / middle school syllabi. My daughter, incidentally, did an impressive turn as Mayella Ewell in her 6th-grade class' dramatization of the courtroom scene. Of course, petulant teen is pretty much in her wheelhouse.


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## tocqueville (Nov 15, 2009)

I bet it can be found on college reading lists, although the professors would do very different things with it than in the Middle School, where I read it. It would fit into some theme and cited as an example--perhaps taken apart or "deconstructed" from some angle or another. They wouldn't read it for the narrative.



Starch said:


> Put me down among those who rate it somewhere in between these two, though considerably closer to the 10-greatest than it is to garbage. I will boldly declare that it is Harper Lee's best work, though.
> 
> With a discussion of "To Kill a Mockingbird"? I'm not saying nobody ever wrote a paper on it or anything, but if it was on the reading list for an English class in my day, that's news to me. Harper Lee ain't no Thomas Pynchon. I think it's a lot more likely to pop up on junior high / middle school syllabi. My daughter, incidentally, did an impressive turn as Mayella Ewell in her 6th-grade class' dramatization of the courtroom scene. Of course, petulant teen is pretty much in her wheelhouse.


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## Earl of Ormonde (Sep 5, 2008)

Vonnegut, Kesey, Steinbeck, Runyon, Caleb Carr, S.E.Hinton, Poe, Robert E. Howard, Mailer, Paul Theroux, Bill Bryson, Dan Brown, Leon Uris, Heller, Lovecraft - off the top of my head some of the American writers I've enjoyed over the years.

Lee, Salinger, Melville, and Hemingway are four -off the top of my head - that I haven't enjoyed. And I was left wondering what all the fuss was about...has anyone really ever managed to trudge their way through Moby Dick all the way to the end?  

But it would be a boring world if everyone had the same ideas about who the great writers are and who the poor writers are.


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## racebannon (Aug 17, 2014)

A fantastic book.


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