Reading Across Rhode Island

Those of you who read my book reviews may have noticed that I have mentioned Reading Across Rhode Island (RARI) a couple of times. I realized that some of you may not be familiar with RARI. Reading Across Rhode Island is a project of Rhode Island Center for the Book (at the Providence Public Library), whose goal is to promote literacy for all Rhode Islanders. The idea of the RARI organization is to choose one book a year, promote it through all the state public and school libraries and encourage everyone in RI to read that book. Hence the slogan - one book, one state, literally. Each year the book is announced to the public in January. In addition, an official launch conference is held in which the author comes and gives a talk and participants can participate in workshops relating to promoting the book, book clubs, topics covered in the book, etc. The launch conference is open to the public, but typically it is attended mainly by librarians and teachers.

This year marks the 7th year for RARI and the book chosen was Five Skies by Ron Carlson. You can read my review of Five Skies here. And next weekend, I will be attending the culminating event for this year's book - the May breakfast held at Rhodes on the Pawtuxet in Cranston. This event drew 800 (I think) people last year and it was the first year I attended. At the May breakfast, the author again comes to RI and does a reading, gives a talk and takes questions. Last year I attended this event with two women from my personal book club. This year I will be attending with 7 other women - 3 from my personal book club and 4 from George Hail Library's book club - Books on Main. It's sure to be a great event! For all you bookworms out there, here is a list of the 6 other RARI books:

2003 – Wish You Well, by David Baldacci
2004 – Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd
2005 – Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
2006 – Shadow Divers, by Robert Kurson
2007 - The Memory of Running, by East Providence native, Ron McLarty
2008 - Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen

In case you are wondering, I have read all of these books with the exception of Shadow Divers. If you haven't read Kite Runner or Water for Elephants, I highly recommend them! I'll be sure to let you all know how the May breakfast goes next Saturday. I'm sure you will be hearing more about RARI in the coming months as I am actually serving on the nominating committee for the 2010 book selection! So, many of the books that I will reviewing between now and August will be RARI 2010 nominees. This is my first year to serve on this committee and I'm not sure yet if these nominees are top secret, but if I get the OK, I will be sure to let you know which books are up for consideration. And, if you know of a great book, you can nominate it on the RARI website linked above. How cool would that be - to know that YOU are the one who recommended the book that the whole (itty bitty) state of RI was going to read? Awesome, right? So go ahead, nominate a book or two or three. I know you want to....