Another Book on To Kill a Mockingbird for Your Must-Read List
In honor of To Kill a Mockingbird‘s 50th anniversary, Talmage Boston has a marvelous column in this week’s paper about Mary McDonagh Murphy’s Scout, Atticus & Boo: A Celebration of Fifty Years of To Kill a Mockingbird.
Another To Kill a Mockingbird summer read is Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee by Charles J. Shields. Published in 2007, it’s a fascinating book on the reclusive TKaM author Harper Lee. One revelation in the book is that friends provided her with enough money to quit her job and take a year to write the legendary novel.
I saw Ms. Murphy on CSPAN Book TV a few weeks ago. Her conversation was fascinating. I read the Shields book when it came out and un-learned some things teachers had said, such as that Harper Lee was related to Robert E. Lee, or that the trial was based on the Scottsboro Boys trial. Not true. I had not known that Scout’s friend was based on Lee’s childhood summer friend, Truman Capote. Small world.
@DemBones: I thought it was fascinating that Harper’s friends provided her with one year of funding, so she could quit her job and write a novel. Little did they know it would turn out to be “TKAM.”