Photo of the cover for A Man Called Ove by Frederik Backman.
The Malden Reads Committee has been busy selecting a new book for the schools of Malden next year. They base their decisions off of suggestions from the public, from people who work at the library, and from people on the committee as well. They narrow their options down to at least fifteen different books before they enlist the help of a variety of people to read the books, and then they discuss whether or not the books are a good community read, how they relate to the city of Malden, if it’d be a good Malden book for people to read, and what kind of programming they can put together. The whole process involves a lot of reading, discussing, and narrowing down their options.
The assistant director of the Malden Public Library, who is also on the Malden Reads Committee, Caron Guigli says that they’re in the midst of the, “final selection,”, where everyone who does the reading has to have read all three books, and they put it up to a vote to decide the book for the 2017 program. Guigli states that they do this, so that “to make it fair so you’re [sic] not the only one that votes on the book you’ve [sic] read.” The three books that are being put up to vote includes A Common Struggle: A Personal Journey Through the Past and Future of Mental Illness and Addiction by Patrick J. Kennedy, Stephen Fried; Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years In Solitary with the Bard by Laura Bates; and, finally, A Man Called Ove by Frederik Backman.
The Malden Reads Committee tries to find books with specific themes that revolve around community, and the importance of literacy. A Common Struggle: A Personal Journey Through the Past and Future of Mental Illness and Addiction by Patrick J. Kennedy, tells his story and his struggles with bipolar mental illness and his addiction to prescription painkillers. One of the main reasons it’s a candidate for the final selection is because of its focus on mental illness and addiction issues, which Guigli says, “Malden’s talking about those things right now”. Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years In Solitary with the Bard by Laura Bates is the second candidate in the final selection. It centers around this female professor from Indiana, who goes to teach Shakespeare classes at a prison with convicted murderers and criminals. As she goes about teaching and discussing Shakespeare’s works, the prisoners end up changing their whole outlooks on their lives and Guigli points out that they learn that “learning can change anybody.” The third candidate for the final selection is A Man Called Ove by Frederik Backman, which is the tale of a grumpy, old man who lost his wife in Sweden, and is essentially the worst neighbor in the history of all neighbors. That is, until a young couple move in next door with their two daughters change his life, starting with flattening his mailbox and ends up getting more involved with his community than he would’ve originally wanted to. This book is one of the top three chosen because Guigli explains that it’s about how, “human interaction can save your life.”
Guigli explains that each year, the Malden Reads Committee tries to select a book that deals with “community to a degree,” because they want a book that the community can read to together, and they want, “everyone to discuss it.” She explains that the themes they’re looking for involves community and how the book relates to our community, especially, “literacy and reading and storytelling in the community,”. At this time, the Malden Reads Committee is still deciding and voting on which of the three books will be chosen for next year’s program, but Guigli hopes that whatever book they choose, we will love and decide to participate in as well.
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