Maybe you’ve seen the book around town, the one with the wooden schoolhouse pictured against a soaring Montana sky?
It’s called “The Whistling Season,” it was written by Ivan Doig, and if Edmonds Library managing librarian Lesly Kaplan had her way, everybody in town would be reading it.
The book is also at the center of Edmonds Reads, a month of “reading opportunities” in October that includes a meet-the-author event with Doig Friday, Oct. 3, the Write on the Sound conference this weekend, life-size ‘Get Caught Reading’ posters around town, and other book related activities.
Edmonds’ City Council has recognized October as Edmonds Reads Month.
Doig’s visit in particular seems to be generating interest, Kaplan said.
Doig is a popular Seattle author, and “The Whistling Season” was reviewed by the New York Times’ Sunday Book Review when it came out in 2006.
It is hard to gauge whether the whole of Edmonds is actually reading, Doig or otherwise, Kaplan admits, but there is anecdotal evidence that suggests the city is turning out.
All 55 copies of “The Whistling Season” were checked out of the Sno-Isle Library last week, Kaplan said.
And readers seem willing to go farther, too.
The Edmonds Bookshop, which hosted a community book discussion for “The Whistling Season” Sept. 27, has sold more than 30 copies of the book in the last three weeks, owner Mary Kay Sneeringer said.
“We have been selling quite a few copies,” said Sneeringer, who hung a few Edmonds Reads posters in her downtown store to promote the event. “It is a really good book that speaks to a lot of generations.”
It’s a down-home sort of book set in rural Montana and heavy on the Old West ethic, according to the New York Times review.
“Even where we find chicanery and vile behavior — there is a bit — it’s chicanery and vileness of the old sort,” wrote Sven Birkerts in the review. “We almost pine for it.”
Kaplan just hopes Edmonds is pining for books.
A $2,000 grant from the Sno-Isle Library system is helping bring Doig to town, and the library system featured the Edmonds Reads event on the cover of its October 2008 newsletter.
The library is hosting a photography contest with pictures of people reading.
Ideally, when reading becomes a community event, everybody wins, Kaplan said.
“In the library, in the bookstore, just talking about books with your neighbors and talking to your kids about books?” she said. “That’s good.”
Reporter Chris Fyall: 425-673-6525 or cfyall@heraldnet.com
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