WIKA "To Kill a Mockingbird"

When I was a bit of a young man To Kill a Mockingbird was required reading in school.  By that time I hardly saw the value of a story if it didn't happen to include some element of fantasy or the fantastical.  By then I had discovered the works of Stephen King, Robert Aspirin, Brian Jacques and the still incomparable team of Weis and Hickman.  My mind was abuzz with dragons, alien clowns, wizards named Skeeve, sword wielding mice, and a Kender named Tasslehoff Burrfoot.  I didn't have much room in my head for lazy towns, racial segregation, and some basketcase named Boo.  My world, I imagined and could still debate though far more weakly now, was a far better place.

Around this time my brain had fashioned a crude survival defense against such mundane books.  Yes, I had to read them, but no, I didn't have to read the whole thing.  "Cliff's Notes" was too much like cheating, but skimming half the book, using my wit to fill in the gaps, I could get an "A" on any book report.  I did this for years and was never caught.  I would give a book two or three chapters to catch my interest, I felt that was fair, but after that all bets were off and I muddled through quite gloriously.

Here's the thing; most of those books I was required to read back then were actually pretty useless.  I firmly believe that they did very little to shape me and mold me as a person.  I was better served by second hand accounts of the Trojan War in ideals to strive for and heroes to emulate than by reading A Separate Peace.  I needed less stories about kids my own age muddling through modern adolescence and probably more about Pirates and Gladiators.  Why do I say this?  Well, there's a bit of a disconnect when it comes to an adult deciding what children "should" read.  I've already read the first chapter of To Kill a Mockingbird and I was immediately transported.  I can already see the sleepy, little, idyllic Maycomb.  I'm laughing at the dry little jokes everywhere.  It is very much a book that I can only "get" now.  Perhaps my opinion will change by the end of the book, but this very much seems like a book that can only be fully appreciated as an adult.   However I'm sure it has values that an adult thinks that children "should" read about.  But back then...gimme Treasure Island or Robinson Crusoe.

What I know about To Kill a Mockingbird is pretty much that the main character is a girl named Scout, (Which I did think was pretty awesome.  I had a bit of a crush on her because of her name and the mental image of a tomboy it conjured, but it wasn't enough to carry me through the book.)she constantly calls her dad by his first name, her dad is a lawyer named Atticus Finch, there's a strange boy named Boo, and there's a moment where shiny steel scissors are stabbed forcefully into a thigh.

My ignorance is fairly considerable on this, however I comfort myself with the fact that it is hardly as vast as my ignorance in regard to Jane Eyre.  

I have a feeling this will be a fairly quick read as that it's only 325 pages in a standard paperback format.  I'm not sure how many "word nerd" posts I'll have given its modern setting and writing.  There may be a few southern colloquialisms that would be quite fun to delve into.

Since this is a "mandatory book" in our schools I'm hoping to hear from you all with your different views on the book and what you took away from it as a child vs. an adult.  Please feel free to comment, disagree loudly, or argue with me on any point.  :)

Pax,

W