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Aaron Smith
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Joined: 06 September 2006
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Posted: 19 September 2014 at 6:08am | IP Logged | 1 post reply

I just finished TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD which I liked well enough but didn't rock my world.

***

I just read that for the first time recently too, and felt the same way. It was good, but not as amazing as I might have expected, considering its reputation.
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Mike Purdy
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Joined: 29 April 2004
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Posted: 19 September 2014 at 8:29am | IP Logged | 2 post reply

Just started Ken Follett's The Edge of Eternity.
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Tom French
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Posted: 19 September 2014 at 8:39am | IP Logged | 3 post reply

MOCKINGBIRD is divided into two uneven parts.  The first, about a third of the book, is expository, introducing us to the town and how it works, all the characters and how they interact.  The second part deals with the trial and its aftermath.  This second section is almost the entire book, so I wonder why it wasn't divided into three parts: Exposition, Trial, and Post-trial? 

Why divide at all?  There's no narrative jump, no time leap, no setting change between parts one and two, so why the divide, especially so early in the book? As an editor, I wonder if I would get rid of it entirely?

 

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Michael Penn
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Posted: 19 September 2014 at 9:54am | IP Logged | 4 post reply

The most common criticism of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD has been from the beginning and remains today that the narrative structure doesn't quite work, at least not in any obvious way. The "divide" has been argued to reflect an initial child-like view of the novel's society and people therein and then, having foreshadowed in a more innocent way the major characters and themes, to put those original notions on trial, as it were, through the experience of the literal trial and its affects and effects upon the same society and its people. Satisfied? Almost nobody has been.
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Wallace Sellars
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Posted: 19 September 2014 at 5:49pm | IP Logged | 5 post reply

Tonight I begin THE COMPLETE ADVENTURES OF LUCKY STARR by Isaac
Asimov (writing as Paul French).
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Tom French
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Posted: 20 September 2014 at 4:59am | IP Logged | 6 post reply

Paul FRENCH???  My cousin is Isaac Asimov??? All these years, he's never mentioned it. 
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Tom French
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Posted: 20 September 2014 at 5:01am | IP Logged | 7 post reply

Michael -- thanks for the info. It's nice to see I'm not alone. I thought I was being too critical... or blind. 
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Josh Goldberg
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Joined: 25 October 2005
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Posted: 20 September 2014 at 6:08am | IP Logged | 8 post reply

WHITE LIKE ME: REFLECTIONS ON RACE FROM A PRIVILEGED SON (THIRD EDITION) by Tim Wise.
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Robert Cosgrove
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Posted: 20 September 2014 at 7:06pm | IP Logged | 9 post reply

Just read James Madison by Lynne Cheney.  Probably the founding father (among the famous ones) that I knew the least about.  A very good book.

Before that, read Super Boys about Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, by Brad Ricca.  Enjoyed it very much, but might be a little much for one only casually interested in comics--we get an analysis of virtually everything Jerry ever wrote for his high school newspaper, for example.  Reading the account of their wars with DC, it struck me that they were lucky that they were in parity, so to speak.  Bill Finger never would have had a chance to claim a piece of Batman, as Bob Kane was acknowledged as the sole creator, and on contract; and Stan Lee provides Marvel with a shield as the "creator" of the books he worked on with Kirby and Ditko.  But Siegel and Shuster had been credited from the beginning as cocreators of Superman, and were both on the outs with DC.  I can't help but think that if Siegel, for example, had reached an agreement, Shuster could easily have been frozen out.  (And no, I'm not commenting on who deserved credit or pay for what, just the power dynamics in play in a contest between a company and its employees).  

Starting The English Agent by Daniel Silva.  Listening on tape to Duma Key by Stephen King.  
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Brett Stuart
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Posted: 20 September 2014 at 7:19pm | IP Logged | 10 post reply

THE GIRL WHO WOULD BE KING by Kelly Thompson.

I'm rarely a fan of prose superhero novels, but so far this one has been a great read.  Highly recommended.

Up next will be either ROSE GOLD, the latest Easy Rawlins novel by Walter Mosley (if I can wait till it's released Tuesday), or GONE GIRL by Gillian Flynn.
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Andrew Hess
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Posted: 21 September 2014 at 11:34am | IP Logged | 11 post reply

Just started "Super Boys" by Brad Ricca.

Just finished "Ten Little Aliens" by Stephen Cole, a Doctor Who novel about the First Doctor from 2002 that was reissued as part of the 50 years of the Doctor series. Mildly interesting, cute stab at Agatha Christie's story "Ten Little Indians" (acknowledged in the foreword), too much time spent with 2-dimensional characters that might not last the novel and not enough Doctor for my tastes.
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Gregory Harshman
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Posted: 30 September 2014 at 1:41pm | IP Logged | 12 post reply

The American Way of Death by Jessica Mitford.

Thanks for the recommendation JB, this book was fantastic!

I learned more about the embalming process than I ever wanted to know, and it had what has to be the best footnote ever: “I do not like the repeated use of sic. It seems to impart a pedantic, censorious quality to the writing. I have throughout made every effort to quote the funeral trade publications accurately; the reader who is fastidious about usage will hereafter have to supply his own sics.”
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