One School, One Book?

Posted July 14, 2015 by Alison Mitchell

 I recently finished The Martian by Andy Weir for “Somerville Reads”/One City One Book, and it was fabulous. 

Actually, I’ll admit that in the beginning, I thought it was just OK.  However, right about the time I thought “I don’t think I can read 300 pages of this,”  the perspective of the story changed, a whole bunch of new characters were introduced, and it really took off.  Excellent, excellent book.  Seriously — more than one night I’ve fallen asleep imagining that the characters were real people and wondering how the United States would respond if the situation in the book really happened.

(Side note: I’ll get to continue my fantasy with the characters, since the movie version of the book is coming out soon — starring Matt Damon!) 

Anyway, back to the point.  My family has really enjoyed One City One Book here in Somerville.   A few years ago, my husband won a Vietnam War-era trivia contest based on when we read The Things They Carried.  Last year, we read Dark Tide, and our local librarian also had a kids’ chapter book and a picture book story of the Great Molasses Flood of 1919, which was a lot of fun (except that we had to convince the kids they would not die in a flood of molasses).  Each year, the library puts together a bunch of neat events, and we’ve spent time talking books with our neighbors, which is always a good thing. 

All this got me thinking that it would be a lot of fun if SLIS suggested a “one school, one book” reading each summer.   It would connect students across programs and semesters, give us all something to talk about.   After first semester, it seems that students go their separate ways, and this type of program could pull people back together and remind us that different LIS fields have something in common — the pursuit of shared knowledge.

Anyone else interested?