View from my bus stop after the last round of snow in metro DC.

Here in Washington, DC, we’re preparing for snow. As I ponder a weekend spent indoors with a lovely pile of books (thank goodness I’m not in charge of shoveling!), how fortuitous to stumble upon this quote by Edith Wharton.

The early mist had vanished and the fields lay like a silver shield . . .It was one of the days when the glitter of winter shines . . . .

What are your favorite literary quotes about snow or other seasonal weather? (And don’t forget to visit The Big Read calendar to find out where there’s some Big Reading taking place near you.)

Winning writer Derrick Jones at the essay contest award ceremony with Tom Messner, NSU Broken Arrow Library Director, and Jennifer Kilgore, Muskogee High School Head Librarian. Photo courtesy of Northeastern State University 

As part of its Big Read celebration of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Oklahoma’s Northeastern State University sponsored an essay writing contest for local high school students. Here’s an excerpt from the winning essay by Derrick Jones, a sophomore at Muskogee High School.

Fahrenheit 451 is a fiction, but in it is a multitude of universal truths and lessons. Ignorance is bliss . . . for a time. Then it becomes emptiness, transforming people into vacuous ghosts of who they used to be. Sometimes the truth is cruel . . . but does that make a difference? If we never know pain, we can never know pleasure. By removing all the bad things, you erase the good as well. The novel is a warning: find a balance between the two, or you will forever be lost.

Want to find a Fahrenheit 451 Big Read near you? Just visit The Big Read calendar.

“Yankee ranger, you’re cleared for takeoff” by tigerplish from Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/tigerplish/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

A featured speaker at the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society’s New Orleans Big Read of The Maltese Falcon, Dennis Lehane is the author of such noteworthy books as Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone, and The Given Day. Lehane had this to say about the pleasures of reading:

I read to travel—time travel, country travel, consciousness travel. This year, I’ve been to Iraq and Afghanistan (The Forever War), the Dust Bowl during the Depression (The Worst Hard Time), Sweden in the 1970s (The Terrorists), and North Carolina, again during the Depression (Serena.) So I’ve gotten around, met some people, lived some lives. And I didn’t have to pay for checked baggage. A great book is dangerous—it makes everything else in your life vanish.

People are talking about . . . The Big Read somewhere near you! Check The Big Read calendar to find out where you can join the discussion.

Per Tom Carson, “Dr. Destruction is  a local [Kenosha] celebrity who has a television show about horror movies.   He is a regular user of the library and supports our core values.  He approached us and asked how he could be involved in the The Big Read.”

Kenosha Public Library’s Big Read of  The Grapes of Wrath doesn’t officially launch until February 27, but the library has been plenty busy getting ready to celebrate Steinbeck.  Here’s an update from Tom Carson, the library’s head of reference services.

We began giving away copies of The Grapes of Wrath on Monday, January 4, and boy, were we surprised by the public’s reaction! More than 450 copies were gone by noon.  We had distribution points spread throughout Kenosha.  Our Friends of the Library were very generous and purchased another 500 copies.  Those copies were snapped up within hours.  The library decided to use donation money to purchase another 250 copies, and those were all gone by yesterday.  Everyone is busy reading the book and getting ready for the official kick-off event on February 27.  If this initial interest carries over into participation in the discussions and programs, this will be the most successful endeavor that the library has ever undertaken to promote and support reading in the community. 

This project has opened our eyes to the power of partnerships. For example, we have partnered with the Kenosha Literacy Council which, in addition to helping ESL students read the book, is using the book with inmates in a local correctional institution to improve their reading, writing, and comprehension skills. Also, our local community cable outlet is promoting The Big Read in a big way.

Visit The Big Read website to learn more about Kenosha Public Library and its calendar of events for The Big Read.

Yucateca weaving in Merida, Mexico, by Lucy Nieto from Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/lucynieto/ / CC BY-NC 2.0)

Carlos Fuentes is one of the Mexican writers featured in the Big Read anthology Sun, Stone, and Shadows: 20 Great Mexican Short Stories. The son of a diplomat, Fuentes himself served a two-year term as the Mexican Ambassador to France, in addition to pursuing a career as a writer, editor, educator, and scholar. In this interview excerpt, Fuentes speaks on the value of reading.

We are assailed by a thousand sounds and images that distract us from ourselves, from our own thoughts.  Reading is a way to come back into ourselves, into our soul, remember who we are, reflect on our lives, reflect on the world, reflect on other people.  I think it essential for a culture, for a civilization to have readers.

#6 by Jorge Miente via Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/jorgemiente/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

 Three of the novels in The Big Read library are composed of interlinked stories: Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine, and Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. Here’s O’Brien’s gem of an explanation (as you’ll see, pun intended) on the structure of his novel.

I wanted to have self-contained stories; I think all chapters of books ought to be, anyway.  You shouldn’t just arbitrarily end a chapter and say, “Well, continue it.”  There has to be some sense of resolution. . . And yet, I wanted each section or story to receive the light of other stories the way it would in a necklace.  Or one gemstone would receive the light of the ruby next to it.  And that would receive the light of the diamond and other rubies.  So that although they are meant to stand alone, and one would hope you could appreciate the story on its own, it seems to me that in the end, you aim ambitiously for what  writers worth their salt aim at. . .making a book of art of some sort.  And that’s the sense of pieces being in position so that they can reflect.  That was a big part of putting [The Things They Carried] together and deciding what to write.  So that pieces are capable of not just reflecting, but absorbing the light of other pieces.

Where are they reading The Things They Carried or another Big Read title near you? Check The Big Read calendar to find out.

“A library user in its natural habitat” by Molly Ali from Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/mollyali/ / CC BY-NC 2.0)

On the one hand, there’s ample evidence that literary reading is not as popular a pasttime as it used to be. On the other hand, when you hear all of the enthusiastic testimonials from folks who are participating in The Big Read and other reading programs and projects, it’s clear that there are entire towns, cities, and, even, states full of people that still have books at the top of their to-do lists. In this excerpt from a conversation with the NEA, Marilynne Robinson chimes in on the persistent nature of literary culture.

I do think that how people spend their time, and people often have limited time, is responsive to what they feel about the world. I think that a lot of people are reading what they find on the Internet,and a lot of this is information of a valuable or interesting kind, you know. I think that there’s a lot of interest in nonfiction because there are lots of problems that are cultural and social problems that are addressed by nonfiction.  I think that, in my own experience going around doing readings and so on and talking to other people who do them, there is a very passionate reading audience. I don’t know how large it is, but there are some very intense readers out there. 

I think that the literary culture of a civilization is sort of, it’s like the musical culture, you know.  It’s profoundly expressive and reflective in a way that is, perhaps, not easily articulated. But I think that you can see in this culture, odd as its forms are, sometimes, that there’s a kind of coherence that is established in cultural life by music. I think that this is true also when a culture is producing strong literature, that it becomes a way in which a culture can converse with itself and can form its idea of value in life, the esthetic, the beautiful. I mean the oldest art we have is narrative literature, which has been very meticulously maintained, by who knows who, over eons. I think that there’s a very strong impulse in human cultures to produce this kind of culture; it’s hard to imagine it being lost.  It’s sort of like imagining that people will stop dreaming, you know.

To find a Big Read even near you, visit The Big Read calendar. Don’t forget the last day to apply for a Big Read grant for 2010-2011 is Monday, February 2.

Greenwood County Library in Greenwood, South Carolina, is hosting a Big Read of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird this January and February.  So far, the library has distributed more than 1,500 copies of the novel. At least nine community book groups have adopted Mockingbird as one of their winter reads. In today’s photos, led by Ninety Six Library Branch Manager Diana Hennessy, the Extended Branch Book Discussion group plays Jeopardy!—Big Read-style. (Photos by Mike Hennessey)

Visit The Big Read calendar of events to find out how else they’re celebrating To Kill a Mockingbird in Greenwood.

 “Woman reading under wisteria” by Simon Blackley via Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/sblackley/ / CC BY-ND 2.0)

I’m sure I’m not the only one who has heard people say they don’t read fiction because they’d rather read about “real” life. But it seems to me that even the most fantastical fiction can have a lot to say about the realities of being human, no matter what our “everyday” looks like. In reading the excerpt below from Michael Chabon’s talk with the NEA about A Wizard of Earthsea, I can’t help but be reminded of how many times we’ve seen this story play out in the headlines—from sports superstars to Hollywood heros (and heroines) to multi-platinum musicans. What do you think? Can fiction teach us anything about real life?

A Wizard of Earthsea is the record of the discovery, training, growth, testing, and, ultimately, triumph of one young wizard. We meet him when he’s a boy, and he’s first encountering his innate gift for magic. In a way it parallels the story of the discovery of a great entertainer or a great mathematician or music prodigy. It’s discovered at a very early age that he has a talent. And it can only be sort of crudely recognized at first because there’s no one around.  Like someone who’s a great violin prodigy growing upon a farm in the middle of a prairie somewhere. There’s no one around who can really quite recognize just how powerful his gift is, and yet, it is evident. Very early on he uses his completely untutored, untrained, but, apparently, mighty power to save his people, to save his village and the people of his island at which point he’s kind of discovered and is picked up by a talent scout, if you will. This wizard takes him on and attempts to train him but he, clearly, he’s been meant for bigger and better things, and so he is sent off to this academy for wizards, which might remind some readers a little bit of the situation in the Harry Potter novels.

It’s really the story as well of this young wizard, Sparrowhawk, as he’s usually called, his struggle with himself, with the responsibility that comes along with the power that he has been granted.  And it’s a lesson that comes very hard for him, very dearly to him.  It’s very difficult for him to realize that being a wizard doesn’t mean that you can do anything you want to, even though, actually, you can do anything you want to. That when you attempt to overreach or go beyond the sort of natural limitations that the world places on us, you can do grave harm, even with the best intentions or even with the most innocent intentions. And it’s in the course of committing one of these sort of childish pranks that are typical at this school for wizards that he unleashes a terrible power, a terrible force on the world which then he must reckon with, and which he’s finally obligated to reckon with at the end of the novel.

Don’t forget that if you’re interested in applying for a Big Read grant, applications are due a week from tomorrow. And don’t forget to visit The Big Read calendar to find out where The Big Read is taking place near you this winter.