Go Set a Watchman

Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee, 278 pages

Christa did an excellent job of summing up this buzzed-about book here, so I won't rehash what she said TOO much. However, a lot of the talk surrounding this book (post-publication, anyway) revolves around Atticus Finch, and what this new book--set 20 years after To Kill a Mockingbird--changes about this much-beloved character. Scout is all grown up now and during a visit home finds some tarnish on the character of her heroic, idolized dad.

While it's certainly no Mockingbird, Lee knew what she was doing when she wrote Watchman 60-odd years ago. She punctures a hole in her iconic character, both for Scout and for the reader, giving us all a little lesson about putting people on pedestals. Whether she wanted this published now or not, this book is certainly illuminating to the reading community. It's definitely worth a look.

On Immunity: an Inoculation / Eula Biss 205 p.

A book as unusual as it is important.  Biss is the author of, among other things, Notes from No Man's Land: American Essays, which earned a host of accolades and was chosen as Washington University's 2013 First Year Reading Program title for its elegant examination of race and identity in America.  Here Biss takes immunization as a focal point for a discussion of, well, many things: individual rights versus the needs of the group, the boundaries we place on our own bodies, notions of cleanliness and purity, sickness and health.  She is at once provocative and mild, clearly seeking to draw readers into a conversation rather than pushing them away from a hard, bright line.

While Biss writes with delicacy, in the end she is clear about her pro-immunization position.  One senses in her desire not to demonize those who disagree with her a strong wish not to alienate herself from them.  She casts herself over and over as an upper-middle class mother with all the hyper-vigilant concerns that characterize that tribe.  At times she goes overboard here, in statements such as ,"I remember feeling agony when my son drank water for the first time."  Agony?  Either she is grossly exaggerating for the sake of appearing 'balanced' or she is...well, let's just hope she's exaggerating.