From midnight release parties, to film screenings, to daylong read-a-thons, check out our photos of how bookstores around the country rang in the on-sale date of Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman, the biggest publishing event of the year.
The first Go Set a Watchman customer at the Northshire Bookstore movie screening at the Saratoga Film Forum at The Arts Center in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., snuck out of the movie a couple minutes early to pick up her book at 12:1 0a.m. Photo: Rachel Person.
An Atticus Finch impersonator entertains fans during the July 14 Go Set a Watchman midnight release party at Ol’ Curiosities & Book Shoppe in Monroeville, Alabama, Harper Lee’s hometown.
Movie night on Saturday evening July 11 in Harvard Square on Palmer Street in front of the Harvard Coop in Cambridge, Mass., was “magical” according to bookstore manager Nancie Sheirer. “The weather was perfect, and we had 200 moviegoers who were enthralled for the entire 2 hour 10 minute screening [of To Kill a Mockingbird],” she said.
On Monday, July 13, a dozen Twin Cities authors and journalists participated in a six-hour marathon reading of To Kill a Mockingbird at the Barnes & Noble Galleria in Edina, Minn. Among the participants were mystery writers Brian Freeman (Season of Fear), and Erin Hart (Book of Killowen).
On the evening of July 13, Anderson's Bookshop in Downers Grove, Ill., showed the film adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbrid at the Tivoli Theatre. At the stroke of midnight, attendees picked up their copies of Go Set a Watchman.
Clay Stafford, founder of the Killer Nashville Writers’ Conference, reads To Kill A Mockingbird with his son, Ellis Stafford, on Monday, July 13, at the Cool Springs Barnes & Noble in Franklin, Tenn. The daylong Read-a-Thon took place at Barnes & Noble bookstores throughout the country.
