This past weekend, my mom and I went to see a performance of "To Kill a Mockingbird" at St. Norbert College. It was an excellent performance, but as the end neared, I realized that I only had a vague idea of how it ended because I've never read the book. It seems like one of those books everyone would read in high school. Maybe it's the racially charged language (the n-word is uttered more than just a few times) that prevents it from being read in school. Obviously, I've heard enough about it to know the general theme of the book, but that was about it. If fact, I'm almost ashamed to admit there are a lot of classics that I haven't read.
Barnes and Noble sells classics at a pretty low price, and the library is free, so there should be no excuse for not reading them. However, I think many of us look at the classics as the books we are forced to read while in high school but which we never actually enjoyed. I know I intensely disliked having to read "The Scarlet Letter" in high school. I wonder if I should try it again now as an adult. It certainly can't be any worse than I remember!
There are several lists of the top 100 books of all time. The New York Times version can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/library/books/072098best-novels-list.html. Of this list, I have read four. Interestingly, "To Kill a Mockingbird" is not on this list. Regardless, I think it's time for me to get reading!
Trust me, the scarlet letter is exceedingly worse than you remember. If you read it now, your thoughts will be filled with echos of "passive voice", "inverted sentence structure," "oh how the nominalizations abound!"
ReplyDeleteI've read 13 of those books. Thank you Catholic school. I just finished "The Grapes of Wrath" which I really liked. It took me a bit to get in to the rhythm of the prose but once I did, I couldn't put it down. I also reread "The Good Earth." I'm trying to sneak a classic every so often and so far so good.
ReplyDeleteWe read "To Kill a Mockingbird" in high school. I don't remember it that well. We also watched the movie, from which I learned that if I could look like at man ever, I would choose to look like Gregory Peck.
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