Mayor of Somerville Joseph Curtatone and Executive Director of the Somerville Public Library Nancy Milnor last month announced the city's upcoming launch of the "One City, One Book," campaign, which encourages the community to collectively read a selected book.
"We just hope to get a bunch of people from different walks of life to get together and talk about a common book," Milnor told the Daily.
The campaign, called "Somerville Reads," will launch on March 28, and will also feature a series of events including a book discussion led by Tufts Lecturer of English Michael Downing.
The book chosen is "The Things They Carried" (1990) by Tim O'Brien, an anthology of stories about American soldiers in the Vietnam War.
Milnor said a committee of library staff and members of the Somerville community last fall chose the book because of its widespread readability as well as its appeal to young people.
"We decided on this book because it's been widely read throughout the country," she said. "It's on high school reading lists, so we thought it would be a good book to bring young people into the discussion."
Chris Strauber, Tisch Library humanities reference librarian, agreed, saying that O'Brien's book is a common choice for reading programs and that the writing is clear and accessible.
"It's pretty popular in first−year writing programs," he said. "I myself read it in college in freshman English, and it was also assigned at the college where I most recently worked at."
Milnor also believes that the book will foster good conversations in the community about common experiences with war.
"It's about war and different perceptions of war, and we have people in Somerville who have experienced war all over the world, and we thought it would bring in all these people and get some good discussions going," she said.
Somerville Deputy Director of Communications Jaclyn Rossetti agreed that the program would facilitate a beneficial conversation on the subject.
"Not only is it a great way to increase the number of people reading the book, it's a great topic that is important to discuss," she told the Daily. "It will hopefully bring a large segment of the population together … with a lot of different programs on an important topic."
Strauber added that the book provided an interesting way of looking at the Vietnam War.
"It tends to be good for cultural studies and the Vietnam angle, which is popular," he said. "What's interesting about the work is that it's very personal … it's the story of soldiers in Vietnam and the things they have in their backpacks … it's a way of approaching a difficult subject."
Milnor expressed her long−standing desire to bring the "One Book, One City" program, which has for over a decade been implemented in communities nationwide, including other cities in Massachusetts, to Somerville.
"Somerville's never done it before, so since I arrived here, I've wanted to bring one to Somerville," she said. "They've been very successful all over the country, and people have come out in large numbers for the programs, so I thought it would be successful here too."
A federal grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services will fund the program, providing money for the library to acquire multiple copies of "The Things They Carried" for members of the community to check out from any Somerville Public Library. English, Spanish and digital versions of the book will be available.
Milnor hopes the program will help people increase their knowledge about the library and facilitate increased community interaction.
"We hope that a lot more people will be familiar with the library," she said. "We hope this will generate other kinds of discussion in the community, and we hope to do this program annually with a different book each year."
Strauber explained that such programs, which encourage participants to read one book together, are relatively common.
"They're very popular with libraries; public libraries have been doing them, and a lot of college campuses frequently do a similar program," he said.
The Somerville Reads program will begin with a kick−off event at 4 p.m. on March 28 with a concert at the Center for Arts at the Armory, featuring a band playing Vietnam War−era music.
More events including exhibits, lectures and book discussions will be held throughout April, most of which are free and open to the public. Ellen Kan contributed reporting to this article.
