Reading Together 2010
David Guterson’s New York Times best-seller Snow Falling on Cedars will be the 2010 Reading Together selection. Book discussions and a wide variety of special events will take place in March and April of 2010. The author will visit Kalamazoo in April 2010 to conclude Reading Together.
About Snow Falling on Cedars
A phenomenal West Coast bestseller, winner of a 1995 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, the 1995 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and the 1996 American Booksellers Association Book of the Year Award, the enthralling novel Snow Falling on Cedars is at once a murder mystery, a courtroom drama, the story of a doomed love affair, and a stirring meditation on place, prejudice, and justice.
About David Guterson
Novelist, short story writer, poet, journalist, and essayist David Guterson earned his M.A. from the University of Washington, where he studied under the writer Charles Johnson. After moving to Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound, Guterson taught English at the local high school and began writing for Sports Illustrated and Harper’s magazine. His work also includes the novels East of the Mountains, Our Lady of the Forest, and The Other.
About the Selection Process
From October 2010 to January 2011, Western Michigan University and Kalamazoo Valley Community College will host the national touring exhibit, RACE: Are We So Different, at the Kalamazoo Valley Museum. Asked by the RACE partnership to support the exhibit with the 2010 Reading Together book, KPL librarians and staff developed a list of titles that addressed issues raised by the exhibit.
A short list of five possible titles emerged. A community selection committee read all five. They met to discuss the contenders and unanimously selected Snow Falling on Cedars. Committee members’ comments included:
- “Beautifully written; great sense of place and time—setting feels like northern Michigan/Great Lakes region”
- “Able to contrast WWII-era feelings about Japanese and Germans to modern concerns about Middle Easterners”
- “Although many may have read the book when it was new (1995), knowing the author is coming will be a draw; it’s been long enough that they’ll want to reread the book”
- “Available in lots of formats, including 1999 movie adaption—movie won numerous awards for best cinematography”
- “Lots of program possibilities”