A Novel Idea...Read Together - Where Will We Take You This Year?
Posted By: Chantal Strobel
Date Posted: 3/22/2010
Through the Deschutes Public Library Foundation’s
A Novel Idea…Read Together program, we have trekked across the rivers and streams of Oregon with
David James Duncan’s classic novel
A River Why, journeyed deep into Afghanistan with
Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, and relived the glory days of Oregon’s track and field with
Kenny Moore’s Bowerman and the Men of Oregon.
Where will
A Novel Idea… Read Together take us this year?
To Mississippi in the early 1960's through Kathryn Stockett’s wildly popular New York Times #1 bestseller, The Help. Through this debut novel, Stockett weaves a startling, resonant portrait of the intertwined lives of women on opposite sides of the racial divide and the journey that binds them together.
“A Novel Idea…Read Together continues to be one of the most successful community reading programs in the Northwest thanks to the 6,500 Deschutes County residents who participate in the program every spring,” said Novel Idea Project Director Chantal Strobel. “We are anticipating an enormous turn-out for this year’s month-long series of free cultural events, discussions, films, food tastings, and author presentations.”
A Novel Idea kicks off on Sunday, April 11 with local slam poet, musician, and artist Jason Graham (aka MOsley WOtta) performing at the Bend Public Library. More than 20 programs are planned that will invite residents of Deschutes County to indulge in the flavors of southern cooking, engage in facilitated discussions regarding Jim Crow
Laws and the Civil Rights movement, and learn more from in-depth lectures on the early sixties iconic culture and many others.
Novel Idea Press Release
Page 2
Reader’s guides, book club kits, and calendar listings will become available in late March at each of the public libraries in Deschutes County.
“If you are a member of a book club, we encourage you to reserve a book club kit to share and enrich your discussion of
The Help,” said Strobel. “Book club kits are free and can be reserved ahead of time -- please call Liz Goodrich at 541.312.1032 or
lizg@dpls.us
A Novel Idea is made possible by the generous donors of the Deschutes Public Library Foundation, the Starview Foundation, Bend Research, Francis Hansen & Martin LLP, and a grant from Oregon Humanities (OH), a statewide nonprofit organization and an independent affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, which funds OH’s grant program.
For more information, please contact Chantal Strobel at 541.312.1031 or
chantals@dpls.us