Incredible news!

To Kill a Mockingbird is one of my top two favorite books (the other being The Hobbit). 

 
To Kill a Mockingbird's author, Harper Lee, has never published another book, and has remained a bit of a hermit. Ever since the 1960s, people have been hoping that Ms. Lee would publish another book. And now, 50 years later, she is!
I'm still in shock over the news!
This is incredible!

Evidently, Ms. Lee wrote Go Set a Watchman (an allusion to Isaiah 21:6?) before To Kill a Mockingbird. It features an adult Scout going home to visit Atticus. Her childhood is shown in flashbacks. Ms. Lee's publishers liked the flashbacks better and asked her to rewrite the book from child-Scout's point of view, which she did. The manuscript for Go Set a Watchman was hidden away and only recently rediscovered by Ms. Lee's lawyer. It will be published July 14, this year! (How convenient that my birthday just happens to be July 15 *wink*)

I can't wait! I'm very, very, VERY curious to read this book and see how it "stands up" to To Kill a Mockingbird's standard. Sequeling old stories from yesteryear can be a terrible mistake*, or a glorious success; no doubt people will either love or hate Go Set a Watchman. I have confidence that it will be a good book, though, because it wasn't written now. It was written 60 years ago, before To Kill a Mockingbird, and I read somewhere that it will not be edited before publication (which seems a little unlikely... you'd think they'd at least want to take out plot/character inconsistencies and redundant flashback scenes).

And since we're on the topic of Harper Lee... how many of you have seen this quote?

Did you know that there is more to that quote that didn't make it onto this (secular) poster? The real quote reads:

"The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that." -Harper Lee.

And I think I shall end with that. 

What do you think about Harper Lee's decision to publish Go Set a Watchman?

Live long and prosper.

*Which is why I think William Goldman never finished Buttercup's Baby (sequel to The Princess Bride). He knew it wouldn't be as fresh and original as the first one. It would be a rehash of the first, brilliant book.