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Harper Lee's  To Kill a Mockingbird (1960; 284) - read for the Top 100 Books Reading Challenge - is a beautiful and innocent book that mirrors the conscience of a people. It belongs to the group of a few books, including Morrison's Beloved  and Song of Solomon , that investigate our common mentality, query our attitudes and unapologetically point to our internal failings as humanity. Those books that slowly furl man's animalistic masque, a masque that creates a dissociation between thought and words so that we could think one thing and act entirely in the opposite direction or even a dichotomy of thoughts - one for the thinker and his or her coterie and the other for the Others, masques which further create a diametric self in an already dual personality. One might say a Jekyll and Hyde personality, had it not been described as a cliched phrase. However, what makes Harper Lee's book different from these few others in this sub-genre is the protagonist, nine-ye...

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view ... until you climb into his skin and walk around in it. [34] It's against the law, all right ... and it's certainly bad, but when a man spends his relief checks on green whiskey his children have a way of crying from hunger pains. I don't know of any landowner around here who begrudges those children any game their father can hit. [35] Finders were keepers unless title was proven. [39] There are just some kind of men who - who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results. [50] Had I ever harbored the mystical notions about mountains that seem to obsess lawyers and judges, Aunt Alexandra would have been analogous to Mount Everest: throughout my early life, she was cold and there. I'd rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you'll go after birds. ...