"Mockingbird"

You won't believe what I am reading and why.

I was browsing in our neighborhood library the other day and I came across a book "Mockingbird" by Charles Shields. It is the unauthorized biography of Harper Lee who wrote "To Kill a Mockingbird" which was published in 1960. This was Harper Lee's one and only book which was a best seller and made into a movie starring Gregory Peck and is still in print and is read and taught in many schools.

Somehow I never got around to reading "To Kill a Mockingbird" and since I was interesting in the biography of Harper Lee I decided to read the original "To Kill A Mockingbird" first.

Of course most of you have read' or at least have seen the movie of "To Kill a Mockingbird" so you are familiar with the story of the children, Scout, Jem and Dill and their father Atticus, the lawyer, in the small south Alabama town which was patterned after Harper Lee's own childhood in Monroeville, Alabama.

In scanning the biography written by Charles Shields I was surprised to find that Harper Lee and Truman Capote grew up next door to each other in Monroeville. Capote was sent each year to spend the summer with his aunts in Monroeville and this is how they became friends. The character, Dill, in "TKAM" is patterned after Capote.

"Scout"(Harper Lee) was a tomboy and Dill(Capote) was somewhat effeminate. The two remained friends, even after Harper moved to New York and began work on her one and only book. Harper Lee even did a major portion of the research on Capote's best seller, "In Cold Blood"

I am about halfway through "TKAM" and then I will go back to "Mockingbird" and perhaps move on to "In Cold Blood"

Now you can see why I love browsing in the library. Many times it turns our to be a serendipitous experience.