my new fav. book

So I am what you could call a "book club slacker" these days.

I haven't read the assigned book for months.

Some day I will get back my groove, but mostly I've been hanging on by my fingernails these days.

A couple months ago Max had to read To Kill a Mockingbird for English.

So I decided to nobly sacrifice the book club book we were supposed to read (since I probably wouldn't have read it anyway) and read that one with Max for two reasons:

1)  I've been wanting to read it for a long time.  I think I read the cliff notes or watched the movie in high school when I was supposed to read it way back when (I am horrible, I know).  But I know it's supposed to be a classic, and I like classics.

2)  Max has needed a little jump-start in school lately.  We have been on his case like bees on honey, poor kid, so I pictured us curled up on the couch together having deep discussions about the characters, and laughing about the funny stuff together.  I imagined him coming out of his final test about the book and lifting me on his shoulders because I helped him understand it so well (ha ha).  But really, I figured it would be such a fun thing to do together, and even Dave decided to join in.  So we each got our own books and were off.

The only problem with those grand visions is that he was on chapter fifteen when I was on page three.  And then I was on chapter three when he came home and told me he finished the book.

Yeah, I was such a great example on getting the job done, and he was SO grateful for such a dedicated mother.

Oh, and Dave was in China for this and ended up reading the wrong book all together (he read The Catcher in the Rye, and wasn't too keen on suggesting anyone else read that one).
  
Anyway, I'm pleased to report that Max did indeed do wonderfully on the tests and follow-up without our help, and I finally finished the book on one of my long airplane trips.

You can always tell how much I love a book by how many pages I mark:
As you can see, there were SO many gems in that thing. 
The character development was phenomenal.  How I loved the descriptions.  Check out this one of Aunt Alexandra:
Probably my favorite character was Atticus.  How I long to parent exactly how he does.  This is an example of how he parented Jem (Scout's older brother who I adored as well) right after he ruined the flowers in the garden of a really spiteful old neighbor who was ruthlessly horrible to him:

I could go on and on, but I'll stop there and say that I loved that book.

I am so grateful for good books.  And am thinking now that I'm back on the reading bandwagon (I hope) I'd love some good summer book suggestions.