A Mockingbird Collage

Day 152 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and Ginny is re-reading To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, because she just read a book of essays about it, how important it was in the lives of various readers, and it made her nostalgic for the classic she had long loved.

If you are a reader of this blog, you know I love coincidii (made up Latinesque plural of coincidence.) Here are some coincidii (and extrapolations) pertaining to To Kill a Mockingbird:

1) A young woman in Babbitt's recently fondled and bought the lavender paperback edition of it, as reported in Nostalgic Potpourri.

2) Kim recently pointed out the very same lavender edition in Border's, where we had gone for iced coffee.

3) Seana just wrote about To Kill a Mockingbird in her blog!

4) It is the 50th anniversary of To Kill a Mockingbird, with a new edition out echoing the cover of the first (pictured here).

5) Harper Lee has been almost as silent as J. D. Salinger....(also a topic in this blog and an author in the women's book group I'm in).

6) To Kill a Mockingbird was recently the book chosen by Chicago (and probably other cities) as the book for everyong to read that year.

7) Calpurnia, a crucial character in To Kill a Mockingbird, is also the name of Julius Caesar's wife, which I know from playing Portia, who is Brutus's wife, in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Sigh... It's always all about me, isn't it?

Anyhoo, I notice that the brief Amazon review of the book of essays by Mary McDonough Murphy, called Scout, Atticus, & Boo: A Celebration of Fifty Years of To Kill a Mockingbird, advises people to go back to the book itself, which is exactly what Ginny did, but it was the book of essays that inspired her to re-read the original!

The essays are by Oprah Winfrey (who has done a heck of a lot for books with her book club), Alan Gurganus, Wally Lamb, Richard Russo, Tom Brokaw, and Roseanne Cash, among others.

Further coincidii:

8) Ginny was just in Babbitt's, making a fabulous literary collage from Things Found in Books,

9) and so was Kim,

which is how I got my information...

I have to say it was amazing to watch adults get wrapped up in (go into a trance involving glue sticks) making bookmarks. Ginny said she was just encouraging someone else to make one, and then she got hooked. Kim came with kids, one of whom made 4 bookmarks in 5 minutes and then went back outside in search of free frisbees (me following as temporary shepherd), one of whom ignored her, getting wrapped up in the sports books aisle, while Kim herself rummaged through the box of things found in books.

Ultimately, Kim and kids left...and Kim came back, alone, having safely deposited the children elsewhere, to work on her bookmark collage.

I love people! I love books! I love bookmarks! I love collage!

My mom made one, too. A poem collage. My mom rocks.