#6- To Kill A Mockingbird

I'm starting my reading list out with a bit of a challenge: To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee.  I read this book during the summer I was 16, on my own, without a teacher assigning it.  I thought I was being uber studious and intellectual since everyone waxes euphoric about this book.

I hated it.  I didn't understand the hype.  I avoided this book at all costs in college.

When you study literature in college there are really two major veins: English and American.  My focus was on English Lit., although I was forced to take one semester of American Literature where I spent the enitre semester correcting my professor.  The main reason for my anglophilic nature, is that I find American literature to be the equivalent of dry, stale toast.  British writers use vocabulary that turns their sentences into velvet: smooth, soft, and sexy.  I just can't turn it down.

I digress.  The first time I read To Kill A Mockingbird, I was very disappointed, mainly, because of the poor, southern themes in it.  I grew up in a very poor southern town in the middle of nowhere.  While I love the idea of being a "Southern Belle," there were no beautiful planation manors in my life. Think Sweet Home Alabama with Reese Witherspoon and you basically have my mentality about my hometown.  I've spent a lot of time distancing myself from the lifestyle and the accent, getting an education, moving to the city, and basically just trying to get away from such a depressing area.  So, To Kill A Mockingbird didn't sit well with my 16 year old self, who knew what we were aiming for in life was not what Scout had.

I'm hoping for better things this go around since it has been 7 years since the first reading.  I'm hoping that I will see the beauty in this book that everyone else has seen and I'm hoping to realize the importance of this novel to the global, not just the deep south, experience.