To Read a Mockingbird; Novel Leads "One Book" Lists
-- Library Journal, 08/09/2004
Who rules the one-book, one-community reading programs? Harper Lee, whose To Kill a Mockingbird has been chosen 25 times, according to statistics compiled by The Center for the Book of the Library of Congress. Ernest J. Gaines's A Lesson Before Dying was read by 19 communities, while Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 was chosen 18 times. Among the other popular books are Mitch Albom's Tuesdays With Morrie (picked 11 times) and five books selected seven times: Rick Bragg's All Over But the Shoutin', Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, Leif Enger's Peace Like a River, Kent Haruf's Plainsong, and Homer Hickham's October Sky (aka Rocket Boys). John Steinbeck has four books on the list, which together were chosen a total of ten times. Several one-shot choices are intriguing. The classically-named community of Ithaca, NY, chose Sophocles' Antigone, while Tampa-Hillsborough County, FL, chose another play, Nilo Cruz's Anna in the Tropics, which is set locally. In Vancouver, BC, for the third year of the project, the library allowed the public to choose, and they selected Joel Bakan's The Corporation, billed as "a thought-provoking, brilliant account of the corporation's pathological pursuit of power."
