Wrapping Up: The Mockalong

-
March is coming to an end, and so is the Mockalong. I'm pleased I managed to finally read To Kill a Mockingbird, even if I didn't love it. I did love Calpurnia, and I'm curious to see what role she will play in Go Set a Watchman, which I've pre-ordered for my Kindle (and remain really excited about.)

This week, as I've reflected on the Mockalong, I admit I might not have prioritized my reading of To Kill a Mockingbird without this readalong. Hosting the Mockalong made me accountable to my own reading goal, even as I abandoned my original plan to watch and review the film for this final post (when you don't really love a book, sometimes watching its film adaptation isn't a terribly exciting prospect.)

Admittedly, it's somewhat awkward to not be a champion of the book you pick for a readalong, but literature isn't about agreement. I loved the conversations I had with people about To Kill a Mockingbird, particularly those who took the time to re-read it and reflect on how their perceptions of it were different this time. I tend to think of my responses to book as static (i.e. a five-star read is a five-star read), but how well would some of my five-star reads hold up to a re-read today? The longer I keep reading publicly and blogging, it's worth thinking about.

If you posted about the Mockalong or To Kill a Mockingbird this month, please leave a link in the comments or Tweet it to me. I'll update this post with a list of links.

 As always, thanks for reading!

As an affiliate, I receive a small commission when you make a purchase through any of the above links. Thank you for helping to support my book habits that bring more content to this blog!

Comments

  1. Alex (The Sleepless Reader)April 7, 2015 at 8:50 AM

    Here is mine: http://thesleeplessreader.com/2015/03/24/to-kill-a-mockingbird-by-harper-lee/

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thank you for taking the time to comment. Happy reading!

Popular posts from this blog

book review: A Dangerous Place by Jacqueline Winspear

-
Image
The backstory: A Dangerous Place  is the eleventh historical mystery featuring Maisie Dobbs. My reviews of the other eleven (plus Winspear's stand alone historical novel) are in my Book Review Database . The basics: Set four years after the last Maisie Dobbs novel, Leaving Everything Most Loved , in A Dangerous Place , we meet up with Maisie in Gibraltar in 1927 during the Spanish Civil War. She gets off her England-bound ship in Gibraltar because she's not quite ready to return. Note: this review contains spoilers about what happened in those four years of Maisie's life between books, all of which are revealed in this novel's first thirty pages.  My thoughts: Sunday I wrote about the Maisie Mail I received. These postcards appear in the book itself, along with many others. After setting the stage in Gibraltar in the opening pages (Maisie stumbles upon a dead body), Winspear recounts the last four years of Maisie's life in the form of postcards, letters, an
Read more

book review: Run by Ann Patchett

-
Image
The backstory: After loving State of Wonder  ( my review ), I set out to read all of Ann Patchett's books. The basics: Run  is the story of the Doyle family: Bernard, an Irish Catholic ex-mayor of Boston, his deceased wife Bernadette, their adult son Sullivan, and their two adopted college ages sons, Tip and Teddy, who are biological brothers. My thoughts: I'm beginning to think Ann Patchett is my soul sister. Her writing reaches me deeply, and I've adored everything she's written. It was a special treat to read Run , the novel of hers I knew the least about going in. Although I had the framework of two of her novels and one memoir, I didn't know what to expect. Run  isn't as universally loved as some of her other works, so I was particularly curious to see how it measured up. Admittedly, Run  started off slowly for me. It took two chapters to really get into the heart of the story, but once it happened, I was hooked. One of the things I love most about
Read more

book review: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

-
Image
The backstory: Gilead  won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005, the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2004, and was longlisted for the Orange Prize in 2006. The basics: As Rev. Ames nears the end of his life in the 1950's, he begins a letter to his young son because Ames realizes his son is too young to really know him. Gilead  is that letter. My thoughts: Gilead  is a novel I'm been meaning to read for years. It's a character-driven, Midwestern narrative by one of our best contemporary writers. It should be a novel I love, yet I struggled to finish it and admit I was wowed by neither the story nor the writing. Gilead  seemed almost stream-of-consciousness at first. I appreciated that Robinson jumped right in: this novel is a letter from father to son; the reader's ignorance of these two characters is not the focus. As the novel progressed, more details began to be filled in, and the reader begins to understand the characters, setting and purpose. I enjoyed the fir
Read more