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Post by Mini Mia on Nov 19, 2016 18:39:41 GMT -6
This thread is for discussing: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
BTW: My sister informed me we were doing Thanksgiving on Tuesday. I'm assuming that means the grandkids will be with their father on Thursday. His mother has cancer, and word is it isn't good, so I guess they're letting her have her last holidays with her grandkids.
So, this coming weekend should work well for me.
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Post by Mini Mia on Nov 19, 2016 19:18:21 GMT -6
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Post by Phalon on Nov 20, 2016 10:05:43 GMT -6
This is the cover of the copy I'm reading: www.barnesandnoble.com/w/to-kill-a-mockingbird-lee-harper/1124913731?ean=9781435132412Here are examples of some of the many covers throughout the decades (when LX read the book in high school, her copy was the black and white silhouette version #7): bookriot.com/2015/07/14/many-book-covers-kill-mockingbird/Since your copy was published before Lee wrote her "Foreward", maybe you'd like to read it: "Please spare "Mockingbird" an Introduction. As a reader I loathe Introductions. To novels, I associate Introductions with long-gone authors and works that are being brought back into print after decades of interment. Although "Mockingbird" will be 33 this year, it has never been out of print and I am still alive, although very quiet. Introductions inhibit pleasure, they kill the joy of anticipation the frustrate curiosity. The only good thing about Introductions is that in some cases they delay the dose to come. "Mockingbird" still says what it has to say; it has managed to survive the years without preamble." ~ Harper Lee, 12 February 1993 I agree...and I don't. I always read Introductions; sometimes I'm disappointed I did, other times I think I'd be somewhat lost if I hadn't read a novel's introduction. One that comes to mind is "Northanger Abbey" by Jane Austen - without the Introduction, I don't think I would have picked up that she wrote it as a biting satire to the Gothic Romance novels of her time. BTW, I started reading "To Kill a Mockingbird" because we were talking at work about famous people who died this year. Harper Lee died this past February, and when I mentioned I've never read the book, my co-worker brought in his copy.
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Post by Mini Mia on Nov 20, 2016 21:25:54 GMT -6
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Post by Phalon on Nov 21, 2016 7:24:56 GMT -6
I hate when that happens!!! I skimmed the Introduction to "Silver Kiss" on the link you posted, and one line immediately jumped out at me - 'I have received many letters over the years asking me why Simon had to die...'. Seriously? The author gives away that a main character dies before her readers even start the book? Like you said - WTF?
Not that it matters, but how many pages are in your copy of "To Kill a Mockingbird"? The print on my copy seems large - I jotted down a couple of notes last night while reading, and don't want to reference page numbers if our copies are laid out differently.
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Post by Mini Mia on Nov 21, 2016 18:41:10 GMT -6
I know. That should have been put at the end of the book. And, maybe the author was told it was for the back of the book, and then the publishers changed their mind.
My book is 281 pages long. Chapter 1: pages 3--15, Chapter 2: pages 15--22 ... the font is small.
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Post by Phalon on Nov 22, 2016 6:32:55 GMT -6
Referencing pages is out - my copy has 323 pages.
I talked to Scrappy the other day, asking if she wanted to join in - she's never read the book either. She was going to stop by the used book store to see if they had a copy, but I haven't heard back from her yet.
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Post by Mini Mia on Nov 22, 2016 16:13:10 GMT -6
I posted on my Joxcenia Facebook we were doing this if anyone else wanted to join in. Q is friends with that profile, and some members of Runboard know of the account, but no one has opted to join yet. (But then, I haven't logged into it yet either.)
A few weeks behind might not matter. And, we're not one for rules anyway, so stragglers probably won't bother us.
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Post by Phalon on Nov 23, 2016 7:00:59 GMT -6
Probably not the best time of the year to try to start a book club type discussion; people tend to have a lot going on during the holidays.
We can use this as a trial run, maybe - see how it goes, what works, what doesn't, and go from there if we want to carry on with another book after "Mockingbird" is done.
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Post by Mini Mia on Nov 23, 2016 17:16:11 GMT -6
Yeah. Works for me. Maybe draw more posters in.
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Post by Phalon on Nov 28, 2016 10:13:02 GMT -6
So, did we do our homework...and what exactly was our homework? Read chapters 1-5 and discuss, right? Having never been in a book club, I don't know if there's a right way to do this, so I'll just throw out my thoughts...things that jumped out at me or struck me as particularly intriguing in each chapter, and then what I thought of the chapters combined as a whole. I'm thinking is the way I'll start anyway.
Just chapter one now, because that's all I have time for at the moment.
Random Thoughts for Chapter One
“When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we sometimes discussed the events...." I like the way Lee put this. Instead of just saying something like, "Looking back on the events, we discussed...", her use of the word "enabled" seems to imply that as time goes by, a person perhaps gains a better perspective on things they experienced, as opposed to the immediate emotional response to an experience. <shrugs> Either that or the thing that we were living through at the time, wasn't as important as it seemed when it happened. Or we forget the details. Maybe what we remember becomes our own perception of what actually happened. Heck, I dunno. I just liked the phrase.
I liked this one too - “...came to know Dill as a pocket Merlin, whose head teemed with eccentric plans, strange longings, and quaint fancies.” To Jem and Scout, having never been outside of the small town of Maycomb, Dill's experiences, such as seeing movies, must seem magical. Or hmmmm...because their perception of "normal" was life within Maycomb, anything outside the town's borders, they viewed as eccentric, strange, and unusual.
I didn't understand the simile “drew him as the moon draws water” regarding Dill's fascination with the Radley place. Does it have something to do with how the moon affects the tides maybe? Arthur Radley (Boo) gets in with the "wrong crowd" and he and his teenage friends have a night of an "excessive spurt of high spirits" - from the sound of it, they were doing the typical rebel teen thing - and doing it quite tamely, at that. The "gang's" crime up until this night were such things as hanging around the barber shop, riding the bus out of town to see movies, and attending dances at the county gambling hall. Pretty much the same the night they got arrested, doing nothing particularly dangerous or harmful, except driving around town in beat-up old car (a "flivver"; I had to look that up), and locking the town's beadle (a church parish officer that basically keeps the peace; I looked that one up too) in an outhouse when he tries to arrest them. As a result the beadle, Mr. Connor, charges them with disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, assault and battery, and using abusive and profane language in the hearing of a female, the last of which is debatable in that Connor says only that they were cussing loud enough that he was 'sure every lady in Maycomb could have heard them'. The judge sends the boys to the state industrial school - which isn't a prison or reform school - but a place where they could get things they probably couldn't at home, and a secondary education most likely better than what was offered in Maycomb; "it was no disgrace" to go there, though Boo's father thinks of it that way. He convinces the judge to let Boo come home because the elder Radley will see to it that Boo causes no further trouble. This, and not getting in with the "wrong crowd" is where things start to go awry for Boo. It's ironic in a way, I think - the other boys accept their punishment, get a good education, and at least one of them works his way through Auburn, while Boo, who is "free", is actually locked inside his father's house, never to be seen again - or at least, isn't seen for the next 15 years, which is pretty much a lifetime.
As a result, he goes from typical teenage rebellion to a 33 year old man, sitting on the floor cutting newspaper clippings and stabbing his father in the leg with the scissors. Although he is not "chained to the bed" as Jem thought, Atticus says there are "other ways of making people into ghosts”. Chilling.
Vocabulary word! Nebulous, as in "Boo's transition from the basement (of the courthouse) was nebulous in Jem’s memory." A duh/aha moment for me; I didn't associate it with nebula as in a cloud of dust, until after I looked up "nebulous" - in the form of a cloud, hazy, vague, indistinct, confused. Oooo, I like that, and will have to remember to use "nebulous" in that context, since, since....uhm, what was I talking about again? Oh yes, my sometimes cloudy memory.
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Post by Mini Mia on Nov 28, 2016 15:42:30 GMT -6
I read chapters 1-5 ... and I had a notebook, but all I wrote down were words and other things I wanted to look up later. I've never been in a real book discussion before, so I'm lost as to how it works. Maybe I should reread the chapters and see if my subconscious has things to say on it now that it has read it once.
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Post by Phalon on Nov 28, 2016 22:25:06 GMT -6
How many fake book discussions have you been in? Ba-da-boom.
Heck, Joxie, I don't know. I basically did the same thing - jotted down a few things that I thought were interesting as I read, and expanded on them here. Basically, I just went by how we do things in the writing group I belong to. We read aloud to the group what we've written, and then people point out things within the piece that struck a chord with them. Makes you really listen to what is being read, and someone always brings up a point others may have missed. I read chapters 1-5 with the same thing in mind. It's kind of easier in a way than it is in the writing group, because I have to book in front of me to refer to.
I don't think there's any right or wrong way to do this - it's just us, and we can discuss it any way we want. We did say it was an experiment of sorts. Scrappy has downloaded the book to her phone, and asked where we were so far, but I don't know if she's started reading yet.
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Post by Mini Mia on Nov 29, 2016 1:10:15 GMT -6
I think Scrappy has plenty of time to catch up.
I did have a few book discussions on ezBoards, but it was just Red and me, IIRC? Or Trix? Too lazy to go search Yuku right now.
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Post by Phalon on Nov 29, 2016 22:22:52 GMT -6
If I remember right, Red enjoyed the Arthurian legends; I think she and I discussed, though not in any length, some of the books written about them - which ones she liked, and which she didn't.
Carrying on with my random thoughts....
Chapter Two
With the introduction of the 1st grade teacher, Miss Caroline Fischer, it's pretty clear the town is suspicious of anything outside the town. After she writes her name and where she's from on the blackboard, the class is apprehensive "should she prove to harbor her share of the peculiarities indigenous to that region" "that every child in Maycomb County knew" (why would every child in Maycomb county have these opinions if not learned from their parents?) So Alabama succeeds from the Union in 1861 (more than 70 years before the story takes place) because they don't want slavery abolished, and Winston County (where Miss Caroline is from), succeeds from Alabama. Winston County was also full of atrocities such as Liquor Interests, Big Mules (I drilled: Big Mules are the economic elites of industrial Alabama, with its iron and steel mills, coal mines, railroads, utility companies, insurance companies, law firms, and other big businesses), Republicans, professors, and "other persons of no background". Other instances in which the town seems suspicious of anything outside its borders are a couple things mentioned in chapter one - that Boo and his friends did things the town considered unacceptable partly because they did them outside of town, and in part of the description of the town itself says there was "nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County". Maybe it's more of an exclusive narrow-mindedness than suspicion - for the townspeople nothing is worth seeing or understanding that happens outside of their small town?
“It’s the Dewey Decimal System.” This is kind of funny, though at first I didn’t get it. The Dewey Decimal System is how libraries categorize books, I know, but after reading Jem explain to Scout that this was a new method of teaching that Miss Caroline was using, I thought maybe at one time, it might have been part of a larger education reform. So of course, I drilled. Jem got the “Dewey” part right, but was mixed up about the rest. The new method of teaching was a concept developed by John Dewey, who had nothing to do with the Dewey Decimal System. (John Dewey was also a supporter of women’s suffrage. He said, “You think too much of women in terms of sex. Think of them as human individuals for a while, dropping out the sex qualification, and you won’t be so sure of some of your generalizations about what they should and shouldn’t do.”) Of K-12 schools, Dewey claimed that rather than preparing students for participation in society, schools cultivate passive pupils that can only recite the facts they were required to commit to memory. “Rather than preparing students to be reflective, autonomous and ethical beings capable of arriving at social truths through critical and intersubjective discourse, schools prepare students for docile compliance with authoritarian work and political structures, discourage the pursuit of individual and communal inquiry, and perceive higher learning as a monopoly of the institution of education.” He argued that education and learning are social and interactive processes. Very strange then that Miss Caroline demands that Scout stop reading and writing at home, and that her father was actually doing damage by teaching her to read. Her attitude is in direct conflict to Dewey’s concepts. Is this because she’s a new teacher and insecure, or is it a need to be controlling? Scout’s reaction is beautifully written, I think. “Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.” Oh my god, how true is that of anything we take for granted!
Vocabulary word! Entailment. Definitely not Jem’s definition – ‘a condition of having your tail in a crack’. If “entail” means to include or involve as a necessity, then “entailment” would be the result of all a thing entails, no? It doesn't make sense though, in the context of the story. "Entailment was only a part of Mr. Cunningham’s vexations. The acres not entailed were mortgaged to the hilt, and the little cash he made went to interest.” Then I found this in the drill, “an old-fashioned definition of entailment is a set of limitations that restrict the ways property can be bequeathed to heirs.” Ok, that makes sense.
Also mentioned in reference to Mr. Cunningham’s financial woes is the WPA; I had to look that up too. The acronym stands for The Works Progress Administration (renamed in 1935 to the Works Project Adminstration). It was a New Deal Agency during the Depression that employed millions of people to do public works projects such as construction of public building and roads. Chapter 2 was definitely a drilling chapter for me!
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Post by Mini Mia on Nov 29, 2016 23:37:53 GMT -6
Here are the ezBoards Book Club threads should you want to reminisce:
Jun 27 03 8:14 PM
Jul 24 03 2:23 PM
Jul 24 03 2:31 PM
Jul 25 03 9:56 PM
Nov 9 03 10:57 PM
Nov 10 03 11:09 PM
Nov 12 03 5:10 PM
Nov 18 03 4:18 PM
Nov 18 03 4:59 PM
*** Lesa had a code that turned "LurkerLoo" into each person's username. Caused a lot of hysteria. ***
Nov 29 03 3:11 AM
Nov 29 03 3:14 AM
Nov 29 03 3:46 AM
Dec 1 03 4:56 PM
Dec 1 03 4:56 PM
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Post by Phalon on Dec 1, 2016 6:37:29 GMT -6
So did you guys ever actually discuss the book on the board other than 'did you like it', or were all your discussions in a chat room?
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Post by Scrappy Amazon on Dec 1, 2016 8:21:10 GMT -6
*sigh ladies.......
I am trying I promise but here's the deal. Not only am I trying to get all the things we normally do as a family together for the holidays but I'm in charge of the holiday stuff for staff too! I'm two pages in. The staff party is this weekend. I promise I will try and catch up as soon as its over!
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Post by Mini Mia on Dec 1, 2016 19:28:49 GMT -6
So did you guys ever actually discuss the book on the board other than 'did you like it', or were all your discussions in a chat room?
There were no chats. I missed one because I got my days mixed up. The rest I showed up for, but was the only one who did.
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Post by Phalon on Dec 2, 2016 6:58:39 GMT -6
A party!!! Will there be costumes? I'd be a lamp. (Oh, wait - different holiday.) Catered or potluck? Decorations? Games - charades, perhaps, in which everyone tries to guess which holiday movie character the person is acting out (I'd be the lamp.)? A gift exchange? Those white elephant things are always fun (an ugly table lamp, for example). Have fun, Scrapeletta.
Join in when you can - I don't think it matters that you're behind; heck, I'm still trying to post the rest of the stuff that I got out of the first five chapters, but haven't had a chance yet. It doesn't look like it'll happen today either - it's another holiday table arrangement making day for the market tomorrow, and I'd better get started; I don't want to be up all night with my kitchen filled piles of evergreen branches.
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Post by Scrappy Amazon on Dec 2, 2016 8:33:18 GMT -6
Buffet at a restaurant. On a the patio. We got a little loud last year. Yes games. Yes white elephant which I still haven't picked one out for mine yet. Door prizes and goodie bags. We'll be putting those together after work tonight.
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Post by Scrappy Amazon on Dec 3, 2016 8:43:20 GMT -6
Just got to the part with the description of the crazy guy next door. Remind me I want to wax philosophic on the comparison of "negros" to mentally unstable people.
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Post by Mini Mia on Dec 3, 2016 17:48:46 GMT -6
Yes! I noticed that too. It's a prelude as to what is to come. I haven't reread the chapters yet, I'll get to it soon. Had some things come up and distract me. It also never occurred to me before that the mean little boy at school was related to the 'rape' victim. Him being in class gave up an inside look into the family so we could understand them from the inside out.
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Post by Mini Mia on Dec 3, 2016 17:52:05 GMT -6
Sometimes I like rereading a book to see what I missed in the first reading ... I wonder what we'd learn from having a reread discussion? Although, I have read this book years ago, and I've seen the movie many, many times ... so that probably won't be necessary for this book discussion.
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Post by Phalon on Dec 3, 2016 22:32:54 GMT -6
There are a few more similar instances in the chapters 1-5 - maybe we can discuss them as a whole when you get through chapter five? The book, btw, just made the news yesterday, for being banned in a school...again (the day after, btw, the 61st anniversary of Rosa Parks refusing to give up her bus seat). It, along with "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" are being temporarily pulled in a Virginia school district for racial slurs; the "n" word appears in "To Kill a Mockingbird" 48 times, and in "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" 219 times - both books are the most banned in U.S. History. This recent banning is the result of a mother of a biracial child who is having trouble reading the word multiple times on one page; the mother sent a formal request to the school board requesting the books be pulled from the curriculum. It's understandable that most people would have a difficult time reading such attitudes. My feeling on this though, (strictly speaking of "To Kill a Mockingbird" since this is what we're discussing; I have never read "The Adventures of Huckelberry Finn" and don't know anything about it except the Disney version of Tom Sawyer) is that it should and needs make people uncomfortable. These types of attitudes existed and still do, and the mother's contention that the use of the racial slur in the books “validates that these words are acceptable”, is missing the point of the book, in my opinion. "To Kill a Mockingbird" is a book that speaks out against racial injustice and intolerance; its use of racial slurs and racist attitudes is not to glorify them or make them seem acceptable - it's the quite opposite. History cannot be whitewashed, or swept under the rug, no matter how uncomfortable it is; there is a kind of danger in ignoring mistakes in our past. www.yahoo.com/news/virginia-school-district-bans-2-classic-american-novels-for-racial-slurs-205910809.htmlShhh, Joxie. Lol. Don't give anything away! I've never read the book or seen the movie!
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Post by Mini Mia on Dec 3, 2016 23:06:53 GMT -6
OMG! I'm so sorry Phalon. I thought you had seen the movie. I guess I glossed over where you said you hadn't. So ... maybe a reread discussion could be fun too? We could go over the foreshadowing? I think this would help as a writer's workshop type thing? To break down the book in a reread.
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Post by Mini Mia on Dec 3, 2016 23:32:42 GMT -6
The 'n' word wasn't always used as a slur. In a lot of cases it was used in the same manner as 'black,' or 'African American.' My great-aunt used the 'n' word sometimes, but only in regard to defining the person. Her vocal tones and mannerisms did not indicate a slur.
Much like when I was young, and I used the word 'colored.' It was to differentiate between one person and another. Then it was 'black,' and now it's 'African American.' That might be something to look out for while we read. Can we tell when the 'n' word is used as a slur, and when it is used to take note of the person. Does the book have distinctions in how the 'n' word is used?
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Post by Phalon on Dec 3, 2016 23:32:59 GMT -6
Don't worry about it, Joxie! I know there is a rape and trial, (I think), but I have purposely kept from reading anything about the book while I'm reading the book.
I saw BP the other day pick up a book she was thinking about reading. She read the first page to determine if she wanted to read it - and the last page!!! I could never do that.
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Post by Mini Mia on Dec 3, 2016 23:39:46 GMT -6
I've had a few people tell me they read the ending before getting/reading the whole book. I don't like to be spoiled ... unless it would save me wasting my time ... but then how can you do that without ruining a good book?
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Post by Phalon on Dec 4, 2016 9:45:47 GMT -6
"Black" is acceptable also, and in many cases preferred over "African-American".
Interesting point. Written in the 60s, the story takes place during the Depression; the word, though often used prior in a derogatory manner, didn't specifically become used and known as a racist insult until about the middle of the 20th century.
I don't like the ending to be spoiled either, but I have on occasion while reading something, flipped forward and scanned pages - most of the time to see if a character who I think is going to die past the point of the story that I've read, is mentioned later in the book. I'm usually irked with myself that I've done it!
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