San Francisco will read Zeitoun

Another city, another great adoption!

San Francisco’s One City, One Book read for 2010 will be Dave Egger’s New York Times Notable Book, Zeitoun. It is a true story of one family caught between America’s two biggest policy disasters: the war on terror and the response to Hurricane Katrina.

Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun run a house-painting business in New Orleans. In August of 2005, as Hurricane Katrina approaches, Kathy evacuates with their four young children, leaving Zeitoun to watch over the business. In the days following the storm he travels the city by canoe, feeding abandoned animals and helping elderly neighbors. Then, on September 6th, police officers armed with M-16s arrest Zeitoun in his home. Told with eloquence and compassion, Zeitoun is a riveting account of one family’s unthinkable struggle with forces beyond wind and water.

Visit the One City, One Book website to learn more about the program.

To request a copy of the new Random House, Inc. One Book, One Community catalog, e-mail library@randomhouse.com.

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Read Mountains Beyond Mountains this summer.

What are you reading this summer?

The Harvard Crimson recently published a list of recommended summer reading titles for undergraduate students handpicked by college professors and faculty members. Among the books selected is First-Year Experience favorite, Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder. Nancy M. Cline, Roy E. Larsen Librarian of Harvard College says:

This is not a new book. I suggest it now because it is about the work of Paul Farmer and colleagues who worked with him to found Partners in Health, an organization that has grown to have an important impact on several areas of the world. What caused me to return to this book (after first reading it a few years ago) was the earthquake in Haiti. Reading about the extraordinary challenges that Farmer and his team faced in delivering health care and building community-based programs gave considerable insight to the problems that continue to complicate the recovery of Haiti. The story is compelling. It helps one become more attentive to the diverse aspects of different countries’ economic and social conditions, to perhaps better understand why aid sometimes does not work as intended, and to appreciate the generous and proud spirit that can survive amidst poverty.

Now, I’m about to start on Kidder’s more recent book, Strength in What Remains.

The list also features the academic classic The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and The Bible. You can find the entire list here.

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Get a FREE advanced reader’s edition of The Enough Moment!

In their New York Times bestseller, Not On Our Watch, human rights activist John Prendergast and Oscar-nominated actor Don Cheadle focused the world’s attention on genocide in Sudan by offering readers strategies on how to take action to end the tragedies. Now this duo is back with a continued call to action: The Enough Moment: Fighting to End Africa’s Worst Human Rights Crimes, an empowering look at how people’s movements and inspired policies can stop genocide, child soldier recruitment, and rape as a war weapon in Africa.

As Prendergast and Cheadle describe, an “Enough Moment” is defined as that time when outrage triggers action and bystanders become “Upstanders,” or people who take action on behalf of others. But can ordinary citizens turn their Enough Moments into instruments of meaningful change? Prendergast and Cheadle say “yes,” illustrating with such examples:

• A high school student in Chicago started Youth United for Darfur to raise awareness of genocide.
• An eleven-year-old former child soldier in Uganda formed a group of others like him to aid in reconciliation.
• A seventy-eight-year-old retired educator in Seattle founded a coalition of churches and organizations to raise awareness and funds for humanitarian relief.
• A young Darfurian woman founded an association of women journalists that uses radios and phones to warn towns of militia groups in their area.

For readers who hear their Enough Moment calling, and for those who are already involved in the people’s movement, The Enough Moment offers a menu of fourteen action steps for change, including contacting Congress, alerting the media, and using social media to organize, to help become part of the solution.

CommonReads is giving away advanced reader’s editions of The Enough Moment. Comment below to request one!

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Queens University of Charlotte has “great expectations” for Mister Pip

Are your students or patrons reading Great Expectations? Consider adding Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones to your program. The book has been recently selected by Queens University of Charlotte for common reading. It is also the 2008 winner of the ALEX and Best Book for Young Adults awards given by Young Adult Library Services Association and was a Booker Prize finalist and a Commonwealth Writer’s Award winner. 

The novel is set on a copper-rich tropical island shattered by war, where the teachers have fled with most everyone else, only one white man chooses to stay behind: the eccentric Mr. Watts, object of much curiosity and scorn, who sweeps out the ruined schoolhouse and begins to read to the children each day from Charles Dickens’s classic Great Expectations.

Dorothy McGavran, professor of English and director of the Core Program in Liberal Arts at Queens University of Charlotte ,recently shared some of her thoughts on Mister Pip and why it has been selected the university’s summer read:

[Mister Pip] is a book about the value of education. Referred to in reviews as a fable, it [also] affords opportunity for discussion of moral choices with implications for individuals, family, and community.

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Is Outcasts United your next common read? Check out the new lesson plan!

Is your common reading program considering Outcasts United by Warren St. John? Have you already adopted the book?

Whatever the circumstance, be sure you check out the new Outcasts United college lesson plan. Prepared by an instructor at Georgia Tech University for the school’s use of the book as a common read, the guide is replete with unit ideas based on major themes in the book, chapter breakdowns, project outlines and in-class group work ideas.

Download the lesson plan here and be sure to check out the rest of the Outcasts United website. It also features Author Q&A, book reviews and other resources.

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Spotlight on Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

If your common reading committee is looking for a work of fiction that combines history with narrative and highlights issues still relevant today such as racism and injustice, consider Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford.

The novel has been adopted as common reading at Gustavus Adlophis University (St. Peter, MN) as well as Schenectady One County, One Book (Schenectady, NY) and Coeur d’Alene Library “Our Region Reads” (Coeur d’Alene, ID). Winner of the Literature Award – Fiction for the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association (APALA), it tells the story of a young Chinese boy and Japanese girl growing up in Seattle’s Japantown during World War II.

…A timely debut that not only reminds readers of a shameful episode in American history, but cautions us to examine the present and take heed we don’t repeat those injustices. – Kirkus Reviews

Ford expertly nails the sweet innocence of first love, the cruelty of racism, the blindness of patriotism, the astonishing unknowns between parents and their children, and the sadness and satisfaction at the end of a life well lived. The result is a vivid picture of a confusing and critical time in American history. Recommended for all fiction collections.” – Library Journal

To learn more about author Jamie Ford and his debut novel visit his website.

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Northern Michigan University & Marquette County to flock to The Sparrow

Northern Michigan University along with the county of Marquette have announced Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow as their One Book, One Community selection for 2010!

The book, which has been previously selected for common reading programs at Knox College and the University of Washington, tackles the question: “If you have to send a group of people to a newly discovered planet to contact a totally unknown species, whom would you choose?” (Milwaukee Journal-Sentenial) According to the One Book Marquette website: 

The plot centers on a Jesuit mission to another planet, but it is neither science fiction nor overly religious.  Rather, it is a beautifully written novel that forces us to take a hard look at our society, its history and its values, and what it means to have faith in something.

Russell’s PhD in anthropology helps her create worlds, species and societies that are believable and shocking; her talent as a writer helps her people the book with funny and intelligent characters. Much more than a fascinating tale of first contact, The Sparrow reaches beyond genre fiction into an examination of morality, belief and what it means to gain, question, or even to lose, one’s faith.

Read more about the One Book Marquette program here.

Read about last year’s One Book Marquette selection here.

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Crowdsourcing author takes One Book to Twitter

It seems the One Book phenomenon has hit Twitter. 

In the recent article “What If?” for Publisher’s Weekly, author Jeff Howe discusses his new reading campaign, One Book, One Twitter—inspired not by book clubs but instead by people like you: “what the NEA calls Big Reads, and what the innovative librarian Nancy Pearl calls If Everyone (sic) in Seattle Read the Same Book.”

Howe’s book Crowdsourcing: How the Power of the Crowd is Driving Future Business in which he explains how the crowd has changed the way business is done, work is organized and projects are made and marketed. And it seems Howe has gotten a handle on one of the latest and most popular crowd-gathering sources and has harnassed it to show what happens when everyone reads the same thing.

More about One Book, One Twitter may be found on Jeff Howe’s blog.

Read the article and tell us what you think in the comment section below for your chance to win a copy of Crowdsourcing!

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The Last Town on Earth goes to high school

Common reads aren’t just for college freshmen!

Central Catholic High School in Toledo, Ohio has chosen The Last Town on Earth by Thomas Mullen as a campus-wide read. The book, however, is not new to the campus. After hearing about it at nearby Bowling Green State University (where it also has been used as common reading) two years ago, a teacher elected to use the historical novel, which poses ethical questions following the quarantine of a small town during the 1918 flu pandemic, in his classroom each semester. Students even engaged in “Q&A” discussions with the author via e-mail.

Watch the video of Thomas Mullen speaking at the Sixth Annual First-Year Experience Conference in Denver, Colorado here!

The Last Town on Earth is not the only Random House book to make it into high school classrooms. First-Year Experience favorites Mountains Beyond Mountains, Lay That Trumpet in Our Hands, and Funny in Farsi are just a few others with roots in secondary education.

Has common reading made it to your area high schools? What are the high schoolers in your life reading?

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