Oh dear. I was reading for a problematic Atticus, and I get where Lee's going with the fact that you should have no idols in order to be your own person - but damn, was not ready for the level of racist everyone was gonna be. Everyone be racist. I read the last half of the book in the kind of horror reserved for especially bad car crashes. 
 Spoiler tag? Sure, why not, book's not been out long. 
 (view spoiler)[ 
 Jean Louise is supposed to be your progressive narrator, and you're supposed to go along with her as she literally vomits out of disgust because Atticus and her boyfran go to a crazy racist meeting about keeping black people down, but Jean Louise herself is a virulent states' rightist and hates the NAACP just as much as any other Maycombian and believes quite wholeheartedly that just because black people are inferior, doesn't make 'em any less human. 
 Charming, in that horrifying kind of way. (hide spoiler)] 
 I resolved to read this and not let it affect the way I think about To Kill a Mockingbird, but that might be impossible now. I'm still glad I read it. Just like Lee recommends - erect no idols, because all people are humans, and all humans are fallible. So, too, are books, if only we'd publish every author's scrapped drafts. 
 Edit: To be clear, I don't really give a flying fuck that Atticus is racist. I was actually excited to read the book because Atticus is racist, because I believe whole-heartedly that someone can argue for justice and equality in the abstract, but still not want to sit down at a restaurant across from a black person. It was actually the narrator Jean Louise I was disappointed in. A white woman struggling with her sense of superiority because she's only marginally more ~enlightened~ than her ass-backwards Southern hometown isn't really anything to write home about. (And another point of clarity - I find the Northern liberal snobbery here grating too. People are racist everywhere; some are just better at hiding it.)