In case the idea of the Quill Awards has you snarking in your seat, I’ve got a list of Best Books that is perhaps a bit more interesting and/or of lasting redeeming value. A recent post on AS IF! listed the Fall 2006 Banned Books Book Sense Top Ten Picks, which were chosen in honor of this year’s Banned Books Week, Sept. 23-30, 2006. Support the fight for free expression and read a banned book! I’m planning to try to catch up on the ones listed which I haven’t yet read. Shamefully, To Kill a Mockingbird is one. I only read an excerpt, though I remember in 7th or 8th grade we also did a dramatic reading of one scene. I can’t remember what part I read, but I can remember the photocopy was on pink paper.
On a totally different subject, you can read a fun imaginary interview with Oprah on the blog of author Varian Johnson, who has an upcoming YA novel entitled My Life as a Rhombus. His agent is Sara Crowe, who is one of a select group who solicited my full novel manuscript (and then rejected it). I’m currently in the throes of re-revising that manuscript–I think that three out of seven publishers/agents wanting to read the whole thing is a good indication that it has promise, and subsequent rejection obviously means it needs more work. Plus I had one of those horrible moments where I re-read it and realized one of the main characters was tending towards the boring, and that I was unhappy with the writing style. ARGH! So T and I are both in revision-land.
Don’t feel bad! Many, many people don’t read To Kill A Mockingbird until after they see the movie, and fall deeply in love with Gregory Peck as Atticus… it’s a gem of a book if you like Southern storytellers like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kate DiCamillo or… I don’t know, in the non-literary realm Anne River Siddons. You’ll enjoy it! I’ve only read as many as I have because I set out to read them — to be obnoxious, since I already lived the Banned Book childhood. Have fun discovering what no one said you couldn’t read!