Reading Together 2009: Rick Bragg

This year the Kalamazoo Public Library community reading program, Reading Together, is focusing on a selection of Rick Bragg’s memoirs, All Over But the Shoutin’, Ava’s Man, and the recently published The Prince of Frogtown. Readers may choose to read any one or more of the series, as all feature the same themes.

Reading Together book discussions and a wide variety of special events will take place in March and April of 2009. Author Bragg will visit Kalamazoo on April 14, 2009, during National Library Week to conclude this year’s program. For a list of events, resources, and other ways to participate, see http://www.kpl.gov/reading-together/.

The Kalamazoo College Library has copies of all three books, and they are also available for sale at the Kalamazoo College Bookstore. You may also obtain the books through MeLCat.

Why Three Books?

Rick Bragg’s memoirs of home and childhood are related but not linear. They sufficiently connect so that readers could start with the newest book, The Prince of Frogtown, then move on to one of the others. Here’s what readers can look forward to:

All Over But the Shoutin’

With colorful language and emotional honesty, Rick Bragg recounts a turbulent and poverty-stricken childhood in rural Alabama that gave rise to a career in journalism and a Pulitzer Prize for reporting. His book is a sensitive but never self-pitying look at the fruits of his alcoholic father’s abuse and abandonment of the family, and at his mother, who bore the brunt of the pain.

Ava’s Man

Bragg celebrates his mama’s daddy, Charlie Bundrum, a heroic figure whose life was symbolic of a people and way of life nearly gone today from the Southern landscape. An ode to his grandfather, but also a study of the history and culture of the rural South, richly seasoned with all-but-forgotten lore and language.

The Prince of Frogtown

This completes the cycle of Rick Bragg’s stories about his childhood. Bragg was convinced the last thing he wanted was to become a father. Now married and suddenly stepfather to a young boy, Bragg looks back to move forward. Through conversations with people who knew Bragg’s father, he builds a picture of who Charles Bragg really was, searching for shreds of goodness in him. Stories about his father alternate with chapters about the developing relationship with his stepson.

About Rick Bragg

Rick Bragg says he learned to tell stories by listening to the masters, the people of the foothills of the Appalachians. They talked, of the sadness, poverty, cruelty, kindness, hope, hopelessness, faith, anger and joy of their everyday lives, and painted pictures on the very haze of the early evening, when work faded into story-telling. Those stories are the backbone of all three of his memoirs.

Bragg was born in Alabama, grew up there, and worked at several newspapers before joining The New York Times in 1994. He covered the murder and unrest in Haiti while a metro reporter there, then wrote about the Oklahoma City bombing, the Jonesboro killings, the Susan Smith trial and more as a national correspondent based in Atlanta. He later became Miami Bureau Chief for the Times just in time for Elian Gonzalez's arrival and the international battle for the little boy.

Bragg received the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing in 1996 while at The New York Times for his elegantly written stories about contemporary America. He has twice won the prestigious American Society of Newspaper Editors Distinguished Writing Award, and more than 50 writing awards in his 20-year career. In 1992, he was awarded a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University. He has taught writing in colleges and in newspaper news rooms.

Reading Together

The Reading Together program at the Kalamazoo Public Library (KPL) invites people throughout Kalamazoo County to read and discuss important issues raised by a single book. This year's book selection is The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon.

The KPL will be sponsoring a myriad of events during the Reading Together period, February 17-March 30, 2007. These events will include films, workshops, and special presentations dealing with themes in the book. Learn more about the book and the events going on at theReading Together website:
http://www.readingtogether.us/

2007 "Reading Together" Book Selection Announced

Kalamazoo Public Library press release:

Community-wide selection committee chooses Mark Haddon's
captivating and widely heralded novel:

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Kalamazoo Public Library, 315 S. Rose St., announces the early selection of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon as the 2007 "Reading Together" title. Reading Together invites people of all ages from all walks of life to read and then discuss important issues raised by a single book. Thousands of county residents have participated in the four previous Reading Together programs.

Kalamazoo Public Library leads Reading Together with the collaboration of libraries, educational institutions, health and social service agencies, cultural, civic and religious organizations, businesses, the media, and local governments throughout Kalamazoo County. The Kalamazoo Community Foundation helped the library launch Reading Together with funding for the first three years with grants from their "Better Together" initiative.

Reading Together programming will take place in February and March 2007. Book discussions and a variety of special events will take place throughout this two-month period.

This year's community read title was selected early in response to repeated requests from the educational community that the title be determined before summer break, when many teachers prepare their curricula and lesson plans for the next academic year. "Our hope," says Reading Together coordinator Joan Hawxhurst, "is that this extra lead time will enable more educators to participate in Reading Together with their high school and college classes. Haddon's novel has been well-received by students and lends itself to lesson plans in English, psychology, sociology, math, and many other topics."

A committee of thirty-five community leaders, representing local high schools and colleges, libraries, bookstores, book clubs, civic and social service organizations, media outlets and various religious denominations, selected The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. The selection of a book whose main character is an autistic teenager offers opportunities to draw in new participants. "The selection committee felt that The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time will spark important conversations about what it means to be different in our community," says Hawxhurst. "The book's combination of unusual language, illustrations, accessibility, humor, literary allusions and compelling characters opens doors to many levels of discussion."

Beginning in the fall of 2006, copies of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time will be available at all Kalamazoo Public Library locations and at other libraries and bookstores throughout the county. More information about the details of the program will also be released in the fall.

About the Book Selection Process

This year's book selection process continued the Reading Together tradition of democratic community participation. Thirty-five community members were invited to serve on the selection committee and to offer their book suggestions. A list of 88 titles was compiled from: suggestions from library patrons and staff solicited over the library website and at all KPL locations, suggestions gathered from last year's evaluation process, librarian recommendations, other community reading programs' selections, and suggestions from community leaders. In the first round of voting, each committee member chose ten titles from the 88 offered. All top ten lists were then compiled into a short list of 21.

The committee members gathered for two hours of intense discussion on May 24 and afterward they voted on the list of 21 books. When the votes were tallied, one book emerged as the clear favorite of the committee. Library staff then confirmed that multiple editions of Haddon's novel would be available from book vendors.

About The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time


"Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. Although gifted with a superbly logical brain, Christopher is autistic. Everyday interactions and admonishments have little meaning for him. Routine, order, and predictability shelter him from the messy wider world. Then, at fifteen, Christopher's carefully constructed world falls apart when he finds his neighbor's dog, Wellington, impaled on a garden fork, and he is initially blamed for the killing." "Christopher decides that he will track down the real killer and turns to his favorite fictional character, the impeccably logical Sherlock Holmes, for inspiration. But the investigation leads him down some unexpected paths and ultimately brings him face to face with the dissolution of his parents' marriage. As he tries to deal with the crisis within his own family, we are drawn into the workings of Christopher's mind." --BOOK JACKET.

Tim O'Brien Tickets Available

Tim O'Brien, the author of this year's Kalamazoo community reading selection, "The Things They Carried," will give a reading and public talk entitled “Telling Stories” at WMU’s Miller Auditorium on March 21 at 7 pm. FREE tickets for this event are available at the Circulation Desk in the Library (limit of four per person). There are also discount admission tickets to the Kalamazoo Air Zoo Vietnam exhibits available. For more information about Reading Together events, see http://www.readingtogether.us/.