I've never read To Kill a Mockingbird, but I saw the movie, and frankly I didn't find it particularly remarkable. Could it be that it's just one of those books that had social importance at the time, but isn't really that interesting any more? In Capote, Truman Capote says (about the book) "I just don't see what all the fuss is about." Sure, he was a narcissist, and almost never impressed by anyone else's work, but maybe he was right this time. I started reading Uncle Tom's Cabin a few years back, and even though it's a very simple and short book, I couldn't bring myself to finish it. It was that fucking bad. I can see how it made a big impact with its criticism of slavery while slavery was still in effect, but reading it today, all of that is fairly uninteresting in itself, and all that's left is a book filled with bland characters, and repulsively boring prose.