| One Book - One Lincoln - 2008: Everybody Start Reading! The Five Finalists for 2008 Have Been Announced! |
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| One Book - One Lincoln - 2008: Everybody Start Reading! The Five Finalists for 2008 Have Been Announced! |
Library InformationThe title selected for the 2008 One Book -- One Lincoln community-wide reading project will be officially announced during a live KFOR remote broadcast at Eiseley Branch Library, September 8th, hosted by Problems & Solutions host Kathy Blythe (along with special guests)! In the meantime, tune in to KFOR 1240 AM to hear promotional blurbs about all five One Book -- One Lincoln finalist titles. The selected title for 2008 will be revealed September 8th!
Thanks for your nominations!
Earlier this year, we accepted your nominations for our seventh One Book - One Lincoln title, via drop boxes at all the libraries and here on this Web site. All of your suggestions were forwarded to a special One Book - One Lincoln committee, comprised of representatives throughout the community, which evaluated all the nominated titles to choose the group of five finalists below. This group of finalists was announced in the Lincoln Journal Star and on this web site on June 16, 2008. The final selection will be announced later this Summer, with book discussion opportunities and numerous special programs scheduled for the Fall. In the meantime, the libraries have ordered additional copies of all of these titles, and we encourage you to read any or all of the five finalists and watch the Lincoln Journal Star and this web site for further developments on One Book - One Lincoln - 2008. As in past years, you can place a reserve on any of the five finalist titles (in print or recorded book formats) for free -- Just talk to any library staff member if you've got questions! If you'd like to discuss any of the five finalists, or the One Book -- One Lincoln process, visit the One Book - One Lincoln blog and the library's BookGuide readers' site.
Would you like to be kept up-to-date on One Book - One Lincoln news, and receive reminders about upcoming One Book - One Lincoln programming events? Would your book group or organization like a library staff member to facilitate a One Book - One Lincoln discussion?
If your answer to either of these questions is "yes," then please fill out the following contact form, and check off the appropriate boxes. Or, you may call the Lincoln City Libraries' One Book - One Lincoln staff contact at 441-8564. (* indicates required information)
You can also add the One Book - One Lincoln blog to your RSS feeds to receive updates about One Book events, and to participate in online discussions about the One Book title(s) and special programming events.
August 4 2008
Did you attend a preview discussion?
So...were you one of the interested readers who attended one of the five Preview Discussions in the past 10 days? If so, we'd love to hear from you...
read more... (0 comments)
Listen to audio podcasts related to One Book -- One Lincoln
One or more episodes of the libraries' regular weekly podcasts -- 'Casting About -- feature information about the books selected as 2008 One Book -- One Lincoln finalists. Read more about them at our Podcasts page, or subscribe to them via RSS feed!
Five preview discussions were held at Lincoln bookstores during July and August, featuring members of the One Book - One Lincoln selection committee talking about the One Book process. Those dates and locations are listed below. Three of these discussions were recorded for eventual release as podcasts:
- Bluestem Books - 137 S. 9th St., Saturday, July 26, 2:00-3:00 p.m.
- Lee Booksellers - Edgewood Shopping Center, Sunday, July 27, 2:00-3:00 p.m.
- A Novel Idea Bookstore - 118 N. 14th St., Tuesday, July 29, 7:00-8:00 p.m.
- Barnes & Noble Booksellers - 50th and "O" St., Thursday, July 31, 7:00-8:00 p.m.
- Barnes & Noble Booksellers - Southpointe Pavilions Shopping Center, Sunday, August 3, 2:00-3:00 p.m.
Book Club in a Bag!
Launching alongside our One Book - One Lincoln program for 2008 is an all-new service being provided by the Lincoln City Libraries -- Book Club in a Bag!
Book Clubs and organizations will now have the ability to check out several popular titles, including the five 2008 One Book finalists below, in a new format. For each title, the Book Club in a Bag will contain 10 copies of that book as well as some starter discussion questions. Book Club in a Bag selections will be able to be checked out for 8 weeks but with no renewals. You can find out what titles are available in the Book Club in a Bag program by searching in the library catalog under Subject: Book Club in a Bag. New titles will be added to this service on a regular basis.
And the five finalists are...
Double Bind
by Chris Bohjalian
When college sophomore Laurel Estabrook is attacked while riding her bicycle through Vermont's back roads, her life is forever changed. Formerly outgoing, Laurel withdraws into her photography and begins to work at a homeless shelter. There she meets Bobbie Crocker, a man with a history of mental illness and a box of photographs that he won't let anyone see. When Bobbie dies suddenly, Laurel discovers that he was telling the truth: before he was homeless, Bobbie Crocker was a successful photographer who had indeed worked with such legends as Chuck Berry, Robert Frost, and Eartha Kitt. As Laurel's fascination with Bobbie's former life begins to merge into obsession, she becomes convinced that some of his photographs reveal a deeply hidden, dark family secret. Her search for the truth will lead her further from her old life - and into a cat-and-mouse game with pursuers who claim they want to save her.
The Memory of Running
by Ron McLarty
Meet Smithson "Smithy" Ide, an overweight, friendless, chain-smoking, forty-three-year-old drunk who works as a quality control inspector at a toy-action-figure factory in Rhode Island. By all accounts, especially Smithy's own, he's a loser. Then, within the span of one week, his beloved parents are killed in a car crash, and Smithy learns that his emotionally troubled, long-lost sister, Bethany, has turned up in a morgue in Los Angeles. Unmoored by the loss of his entire family - Smithy had always hoped Bethany might return - he rolls down the driveway of his parents' house on his old Raleigh bicycle into an epic journey that will take him clear across the country. As Smithy pedals across America - through New York City, St. Louis, Denver, and Phoenix, to name a few - he encounters humanity at its best and worst and begins to remember an early life that too many beers have blotted out. The baseball games, the home-cooked meals, the soothing presence of his salt-of-the-earth parents; none of it could transform the dark truth of his sister's madness.
Three Cups of Tea
by Greg Mortenson [915.491 Mor]
One day in 1993, high up in the world's most inhospitable mountains, Greg Mortenson wandered lost and alone, broken in body and spirit, after a failed attempt to climb K2, the world's deadliest peak. When the people of an impoverished village in Pakistan's Karakoram Himalaya took him in and nursed him back to health, Mortenson made an impulsive promise: He would return one day and build them a school. Although he was a homeless "climbing bum" living out of his aging Buick in Berkeley, California, Mortenson sold what few possessions he had to launch one of the most remarkable humanitarian campaigns of our time. Three Cups of Tea traces Mortenson's decade-long odyssey to build schools, especially for girls, throughout the region that gave birth to the Taliban and sanctuary to Al Qaeda. While he wages war with the root causes of terrorism - poverty and ignorance - by providing both girls and boys with a balanced, nonextremist education, Mortenson must survive a kidnapping, fatwas issued by enraged mullahs, death threats from Americans who consider him a traitor, and wrenching separations from his family. Today, as the director of the Central Asia Institute, Mortenson has built fifty-five schools serving Pakistan and Afghanistan's poorest communities. And as this real-life Indiana Jones from Montana crisscrosses the Himalaya and the Hindu Kush fighting to keep these schools functioning, he provides not only hope to tens of thousands of children, but living proof that one passionately dedicated person truly can change the world.
The Thirteenth Tale
by Diane Setterfield
The enigmatic Vida Winter has spent six decades creating various outlandish life histories for herself - all of them inventions that have brought her fame and fortune but have kept her violent and tragic past a secret. Now old and ailing, she at last wants to tell the truth about her extraordinary life. She summons biographer Margaret Lea, a young woman for whom the secret of her own birth, hidden by those who loved her most, remains an ever-present pain. Struck by a curious parallel between Miss Winter's story and her own, Margaret takes on the commission. As Vida disinters the life she meant to bury for good, Margaret is mesmerized. It is a tale of gothic strangeness featuring the Angelfield family, including the beautiful and willful Isabelle, the feral twins Adeline and Emmeline, a ghost, a governess, a topiary garden and a devastating fire. Margaret succumbs to the power of Vida's storytelling but remains suspicious of the author's sincerity. She demands the truth from Vida, and together they confront the ghosts that have haunted them while becoming, finally, transformed by the truth themselves.
The Book Thief
by Markus Zusak
It’s just a small story really, about among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of thievery... Set during World War II in Germany, Markus Zusak’s groundbreaking new novel is the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster girl living outside of Munich. Liesel scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist -- books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement before he is marched to Dachau. This is an unforgettable story about the ability of books to feed the soul.
Interested in past years' One Book - One Lincoln selections?
Visit our main One Book - One Lincoln archive site
See a master list of all the nominees for One Book - One Lincoln from 2002 to the present [in .pdf format]
The Worst Hard Time
by Timothy Egan [973.917 Ega]
For 2007, The Worst Hard Time, our second non-fiction title, took a detailed look at the ecological and economic conditions that led to the Great Dust Bowl devastation of the 1930s in the central United States. The Worst Hard Time featured both a broad look at a nation in crisis, and intimate stories of some of the individuals who lived through that time period in a troubled landscape. [Visit our 2007 OBOL pages.]
The Devil in the White City
by Erik Larson [364.152 Lar]
In 2006, our first non-fiction title featured the story of two men's obsessions with the Chicago World's Fair, one its architect, the other a serial murderer. The Devil in the White City draws the reader into a time of magic and majesty, made all the more appealing by a supporting cast of real-life characters, including Buffalo Bill, Theodore Dreiser, Susan B. Anthony, Thomas Edison, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and others. Murder, magic and madness at the fair that changed America. [Visit our 2006 OBOL pages.]
The Kite Runner
by Khaled Hosseini
2005 selection The Kite Runner was a novel about friendship, betrayal, and the price of loyalty. It is about the bonds between fathers and sons, and the power of fathers over sons - their love, their sacrifices, and their lies. Written against a backdrop of history that has not been told in fiction before. The Kite Runner describes the rich culture and beauty of a land in the process of being destroyed. But with the devastation, Khaled Hosseini also gives us hope: through the novel's faith in the power of reading and storytelling, and in the possibilities he shows for redemption. [Visit our 2005 OBOL pages.]
Peace Like a River
by Leif Enger
In 2004, Peace Like a River by Leif Enger was our selected title. Participants became engrossed in a novel rich in setting, peopled by fascinating characters, and featuring miraculous events. When Reuben Land's older brother Davy kills two marauders who have come to harm the family, a town is divided between those who see him as a hero and those who see him as a cold-blooded murderer. [Visit our 2004 OBOL pages.]
Bel Canto
by Ann Patchett
Ann Patchett's award-winning Bel Canto was chosen as the 2003 One Book - One Lincoln selection. Readers in the Capital City became enmeshed in the lives of terrorists and hostages alike in a small South American country, and gained an increased respect for the power of music to create bonds between the most unlikely of individuals. Over the course of more than two months, participants attended nine special events tied in to the themes of Bel Canto, and gathered with over 40 more book discussion groups at libraries, bookstores, community centers and coffee shops around Lincoln. [Visit our 2003 OBOL pages.]
Plainsong
by Kent Haruf
In 2002, Plainsong, by former Lincolnite Kent Haruf, was chosen as our city's first One Book - One Lincoln selection. The citizens of Lincoln became familiar with a group of resilient rural Coloradans who were able to forge new and unexpected family bonds after their original family relationships fell apart. Attendees enjoyed five special programs tied in to the themes of Plainsong, joined over 40 organized book discussion groups at libraries and other locations around Lincoln, and a packed house of over 500 gathered for the grand finale to hear Haruf speak. [Visit our 2002 OBOL pages.]
One Book - One Lincoln is a community reading program co-sponsored by Lincoln City Libraries and the Lincoln Journal Star. The program encourages all adults in Lincoln and Lancaster County to read and discuss the same book at the same time. The goal of the program is to encourage reading and dialogue by creating a community wide reading and discussion experience.
A list of what other communities are reading for similar programs can be found on the One Book Reading Promotion Projects page on the Library of Congress Center for the Book Web site.
