To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (2002, Paperback)

Somehow my education did not impose on me a reading of Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird," although I saw the excellent movie based on it several times. What a pleasure to discover, when finally picking up the book in my middle age, that the people who inhabit this book spring fully grown directly from the mind of Harper Lee herself, rather than just the actors in the film.

Harper Lee has written not a single one-dimensional character, and has created a few of the best realized and strongest characters ever put into print: not just Atticus, Jem, and Scout Finch, but also the dignified Calpurnia, the eager Dill, the peaceful but ghostly Boo Radley, even the degraded and predatory Ewell family. These characters jump off the page like in no other novel I can recall. There is no doubt in my mind that these folks are as real as any of the people I see walking down the street, and I feel for Atticus in particular a similar sort of astonished respect as I do for my own father.

If somehow the book itself has passed you by, or if (sadly) it was imposed on you for a class assignment when you were young, revisit it. It's one of the best ever written.