"Mockingbird"

After reading "Go Set a Watchman" last week, I started re-reading my favorite chapters of "To Kill a Mockingbird."

I've come to peace with "Watchman," now just taking it for what it was in the first place... the very beginning, the teeny-tiny minuscule embryo of "Mockingbird."  I wish the publishers and marketing people had not ever called "Go Set a Watchman" the sequel of "To Kill a Mockingbird."  It was definitely not, I repeat not a sequel.... if only just for the fact that it had been written long before "Mockingbird."

After re-reading my favorite parts of To Kill a Mockingbird, I was unable to start reading another book. Which happens every single time I've read 'Mockingbird,' since that very first reading about a year after it was originally published.

So I picked up my treasured 40th Anniversary Edition of To Kill a Mockingbird and started from the very beginning... and I've been reading it, and reading it, re-reading a lot of the chapters, and just soaking it all in, as if I've never read it before. And this happens each time I've read 'Mockingbird.'  Each re-reading is like the first time.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Millions of thanks to Harper Lee for giving us "To Kill a Mockingbird."