I get why she would say that though. Tragedy is pretty universal, you need a lot more context to get certain jokes.

I haven't read it too closely, so I might be off - I just found the story was more interested in the villains than the victim (who has internalized so much of the sexism, and I know that's just realistic, and also, it's actually admireable that she hasn't internalized even more, but it's still hard to stomach from the…

I've long wanted to do a class on Pamela, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Byron, Ann Rice, Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey (not going to ever actually read those last three unless someone pays me to teach that class though), but I'd have no illusions that it would win over lots of people who're not consummate readers…

I've had a high fluctuation of teachers in that department, and they all tried that to some degree or another. At the very least, you could always choose your own book for the book report and every genre was fair game. The type of high-school I attended from 14 to 19 was some mix of trade-school/commercial college,…

Yeah, I'm all for "literary" stuff, light on plot and high on introspection; acquired tastes maybe, but tastes well worth acquiring, and high-school is hardly too early to start. But the Scarlet Letter? Nah.

He's traumatized and coping badly. I always felt you were supposed to pity rather than admire him.

As someone who never identified with Holden either (in spite of reading it at the appropriate age), I find myself regarding the novel more fondly than most people I talk to about it. Of course he's pathetic, but there's something that gets to me about his vulnerability. Maternal instincts, maybe. It always makes me…

Probably not exaclty the same, but close enough that harping on the differences might be missing the point? The intention of the first draft clearly was a critical take on hero-worship, and traces of that are still in the novel that got published, hinting at Scout being an unreliable narrator. So it seems to me the…

Isn't it though? I get you resenting the smugness of the messenger, but the point kinda stands. Racism is still a big issue, and a story like that is very much needed.

You might argue that the glee at the destruction of an icon is just a natural reaction to the years and years of blind hero-worship that went before, and that if one thing seems more prevalent in America, that's probably because the other thing is as well.

I imagine it might have gone something like this: she set out to write about the loss of her hero, because that was her own experience, and in writing about it, she wanted to come to grips with it. She wrote that first draft in the process of growing up. Dealing with the loss of heroes is an important part of that.…

Half of art is about decorating those oxens, the other about slaughtering them. You can't really do without either.

I for my part say good riddance to that flag and I'm also quite thrilled by the complication of Atticus. Where do you get the idea that I would be an outlier? I want that flag gone, because I think the symbolic value of finally getting rid of it is long over-due (how couldn't you cheer for Bree Newsome climbing up…

Please tell me the language you're reading in, where the books you come across are conventionally "powerful" and "heartbreaking".

Agree, mostly, only I don't see how "To Kill a Mockingbird" is necessarily less of an achievment just because lots of its fans have a rather too simplistic take on it. The new novel undermines a popular reading of the classic; it doesn't automatically undermine the classic itself, which is open to multiple readings…

Honestly, if readers discount all other instances of Atticus' valor, because he turned out pretty much just as racist as the rest of his millieu after all, that's on them. Showing that you can have a lot of virtue in some regards and very little in others, doesn't simplify the character, but rather complicates the…

Yeah, that quote sentence really illustrates what's wrong with this review. "I was left questioning how to think about the novel." - As if that was a strike against it! These days novels that leave me questioning how to think about them after having finished them are they only ones I finish in the first place. Why…

Because clearly what we had before was perfect racial harmony. If only those pesky rabble-rousers wouldn't keep nagging, it would be all ivory and ebony living in perfect harmony forever.

Sometimes people do good things for bad reasons. The publication of this book might be such a case. I don't care if the people behind it were just after the money; I think this is a story worth telling and a lot of people might benefit from reading it.

So this is a heartbreaking, powerful book about national trauma and the only problems of craftsmanship are minor quibbles easily resolved by another round of editing, and somehow this is supposed to be a C? Because it ruines a favourite fantasty of the purity of white saviors?