PICK THREE (3) MINI CHALLENGE - OCTOBER 2022

PICK THREE (3) MINI CHALLENGE...OCTOBER 2022

CLASSY CLASSICS



Our October "Classy Classic" is To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee. Let's learn some facts about this classic which was the only book she had written until 2016. Hope you have some fun with the facts.

1. To Kill A Mockingbird was published in 1960 and Harper Lee never made another appearance until November 2007 when she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from George W. Bush. Since then, she has resided in an assisted-living facility in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama.

2.Her parents chose “Nelle” as a tribute to her maternal grandmother Ellen (Nelle is Ellen spelled backwards). Her family called her “Nelle Harper”; her friends, “Nelle.” But she chose “Harper Lee” for her author's name because she didn’t want people to mispronounce her name as “Nellie” (it should rhyme with bell).

3.To Kill a Mockingbird once beat the Bible in sales. While the Bible has vastly outsold Lee’s novel worldwide, more than 5 billion vs. more than 40 million copies, it came in No. 2 to Mockingbird in a 2009 survey in which respondents picked the most inspirational book of all time. Mockingbird won.

4.To Kill a Mockingbird made Harper Lee fabulously wealthy—but she led a most frugal life. Information on her finances is scarce, but according to a NewYorker.com article, she earned an eye-opening $816,448.06 in royalties from Mockingbird in the first six months of 2010. What did she spend it on? Very little. She would make regular trips to the laundromat because she and her oldest sister Alice, the two shared a home...did not own a washing machine. Other things she lived without air conditioning, computers, and cell phones. For all of her correspondence and writing, she used a manual typewriter. As for all that money? Lee was known to make numerous secret donations to her local Methodist church and to charities.

5. Harper and her sister, Alice were ardent college football fans. Since Harper had gone to University of Alabama, they cheered for the Crimson Tide. They also liked watching pro golf, especially the Masters.

6. Lee said she spent six to 12 hours a day at her desk, to produce one manuscript page of text per day. “Contrary to what most people think, there is no glamour in writing. In fact, it’s heartbreaking most of the time,” she told a college writing class.

7.Harper Lee's manuscript for Go Set a Watchman was discovered by her lawyer, Tonja Carter in the summer of 2016. It was actually written before To Kill a Mockingbird but featured an older Scout in the 1950s (versus the Scout of 1930). Go Set a Watchman was Harper Lee’s initial title for To Kill a Mockingbird.

8. Like the character Atticus, Lee’s father, AC Lee, was a lawyer. Soft-spoken and dignified, he defended two black men accused of murder and lost the case.

9. Harper Lee based the character of Dill from To Kill a Mockingbird on the boy who lived next door to her as a child. That boy was Truman Capote. Harper Lee would later work as Truman Capote’s assistant on his novel In Cold Blood and served as the model for one of the characters in Capote’s first novel, the 1948 work Other Voices, Other Rooms.

10.In 1956, Harper Lee’s friend Michael Brown and a number of other friends went together and gave her a year’s wages for Christmas: They said, ‘You have one year off from your job to write whatever you please. Merry Christmas." She used the year off work to write To Kill a Mockingbird. Today the novel sells over one million copies a year.

The Challenge
Choose as many books as you would like in groups of 3, from the list of options. You may choose 1 from three different options, or 2 from one and 1 from another. You just need to end up with 3.

Choose books that...
Are set specifically in Alabama
Are set in any southern state - (Florida, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas.)
at least particularly take place in a courtroom (in any country)
was written in 1960 or later
features a writer/author of any type
that has sold over a million copies at any time
features a young girl or a lawyer
features a trial that was or is controversial.
authors first and last initial can be found in TOKILLAMOCKIBGIRD

Carol Visits the Courtroom of 1960 To Kill a Mockingbird
👻 -★
Set In Alabama
👻1.The Wife Upstairs - Rachel Hawkins -4★
👻2.The Keepers of The House - Shirley Ann Grau -4★
👻3.My Last Days as Roy Rogers - Pat Cunningham Devota -2★

Authors first and last initial can be found in TOKILLAMOCKIBGIRD

👻1.Stronger Than Longing - Katherine McIntyre -5★ (K & M)
👻 2. Muscle and Bone - Mary Calmes -4★ (M & C)
👻3. Real Hazard - Elle Keaton -5★ (E & K)

Features a trial that was or is controversial.
👻1. The Salem Witch Trials - Michael J. Martin -2.5★
👻2. Cassock and the Crown: Canada's Most Controversial Murder Trial - Jean Monet -2★
👻3. Trial and Error - Edward J. Larson -4★

Will be going for

Set in 1960 or later

Authors first and last initial can be found in TOKILLAMOCKINGBIRD

Looking at my current TBR stacks, this one will be easiest-
Authors first and last initial can be found in TOKILLAMOCKIBGIRD:
Hamlet, Revenge!, by Michael Innes
The Magicians, by Lev Grossman
The Minotaur's Head, by Marek Krajewski

I probably have a trio of Southern settings, courtroom settings, lawyers, etc. too, in my wall of TBR books for this month.

>4 JBarringer: Looks good. Amazing what we can find in our pile of TBR's. Sometimes I can't remember why I even wanted them there to start with:)

>4 JBarringer: Very pleased to have your participation in the group. Welcome, 🙂.

Authors with initials in TOKILLAMOCKINGBIRD:
The Templar Concordat - Terence O’Brien 4.5★s
A Murder is Announced - Agatha Christie 4★s
The Other Passenger - Louise Candlish 3.5★s
Angel - LJ Ross 4.5★s

Looked over my October reading and found three that I read that fit this challenge:

Author's first and last name are in "To Kill . . . ":
Katherine Neville The Eight

Features a trial that was controversial:
The Lancaster Assizes, featured in Daughters of the Witching Hill by Mary Sharratt

Features a writer of any type:
Digby Driver, a newspaperman, character in The Plague Dogs by Richard Adams