Bozeman News

Western Book Roundup

One Book, One Everywhere: Community Reads in the West

By Jenny Shank, 2-27-08

In recent years, many towns throughout the Rocky Mountain region have launched community reading programs, designed to unite as many people as possible in reading and discussing the same book.  There’s One Book, One Montana, which chose The Last Crossing by Guy Vanderhaeghe in 2007, One Book Billings, which has selected Waking Lazarus by T. L. Hines for 2008, and Salt Lake’s SLC Reads Together, which is featuring Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner this winter. 

As a part of the Oregon Sesquicentennial Project for 2009, the Oregon Library Association has announced they will focus on three books—one each for kids, young adults, and adults.  Boise has reading programs for kids and adults, and last year the Log Cabin Literary Center’s Big Read featured A Farewell To Arms by Ernest Hemingway, a classic author with an Idaho connection.

According to the Library of Congress, every state in the Rocky Mountain region has initiated these reading programs, although some have been more successful and long-lived than others.

Rocky Mountain News Books Editor Patti Thorn recently gave some thoughtful and extensive suggestions for improving the One Book, One Denver program.  Participation in the program, measured in books sold, books taken out from the library, and event attendance, has decreased since its inception in 2004, when Leif Enger’s Peace Like A River was featured. 

Thorn suggested, in part, that the program follow the model of Seattle’s, which launched the community reading craze across the country.  Politicians including Mayor Hickenlooper vet the list of titles in Denver’s program, weeding out any book that could be controversial or inappropriate for highschoolers.  Some books are passed up because of sex scenes (as was Kent Haruf’s Plainsong).  According to Thorn, Chris Hagashi, program manager for the Washington Center for the Book at the Seattle Public Library, makes Seattle’s selection based on her personal instincts and welcomes books that will prompt heated debate.

I recently spoke to Kent Haruf about his project with photographer Peter Brown, West of Last Chance (check back here on March 7 to read the full interview).  We also discussed Thorn’s article, and he agreed with me that the most recent One Book, One Denver selection, Articles of War by Nick Arvin, was an excellent book.  “All of the choices have been pretty good,” Haruf said, “but they need to figure out how to do it better than they’ve been doing it, so it can get the attention it deserves.”

Haruf mentioned that the program’s refusal to select Plainsong “is water under the bridge at this point,” and that the book has been featured by many other cities and towns across the country in their community reading programs.

“My complaint would be that the mayor’s office has some final say on it,” Haruf said.  “I think it’s a dangerous thing, always, to have politics involved in the determination of what’s art and what art should be available to the public.”

Thorn ran a follow-up article featuring emails she’d received with suggestions for the program, including one from a local author who suggested they switch from fiction to non-fiction, and while they’re at it, choose her book.

There’s no indication that Hickenlooper plans to heed any of Thorn’s suggestions yet—we’ll have to wait until next year to see if there’s a change in plans for One Book, One Denver.  I have to give them credit for supporting the program at all, even if interest has declined.  And at least Denver’s program hasn’t made a blunder like the Salt Lake County one did last year, when it invited Mark Spragg to present An Unfinished Life and then rescinded the invitation.

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