Meet Author James D. Houston

DUBLIN READS Hosts Author
You’ve read the book, now meet the author!  DUBLIN READS concludes with a visit from James D. Houston, author of the highly respected novel, Snow Mountain Passage, and seven other novels including his newest book, Bird of Another Heaven.  Date: Sunday, April 13th Time: 2:00 p.m.                         Location: Dublin Library Community Room, 200 Civic Plaza, Dublin, CA His appearance is graciously sponsored by the Dublin Historical Preservation Association. For more information, contact  Peggy Tollefson at (925) 803-7269.

 

Live Interactive Book Group Led by Oprah Winfrey and Eckhart Tolle

Beginning next Monday, March 3rd, Oprah Winfrey and Eckhart Tolle are starting an interactive online book club on the book A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Higher Purpose.  According to Oprah’s book club  website:

 ”For the first time ever, you can join Oprah and Eckhart Tolle, the best-selling author of The Power of Now, as they teach A New Earth in Oprah’s worldwide classroom live Monday nights on Oprah.com.By reserving your seat for this 10-week interactive webinar, you’ll be able to:

• Watch and participate in the live classroom webcasts
• Ask Oprah and Eckhart Tolle questions before and during class
• Connect with others who are seeking to become more aware of themselves—and the world around them
• Download and save your thoughts in an exclusive workbook
• Access the classroom video archives…and more!

How to Reserve Your Seat:
You’ll need to be a member of Oprah.com and Oprah’s Book Club.”

If you end up registering for this online version of a book club,  let us know what you think of the experience by commenting on this post.  The Library already has 65 holds on this book!
 

 

Dublin Reads @ the Heritage Center

“Think of America, I told myself this morning. The whole thing.  The cities, all the houses, all the people, the coming and going, the coming of children, the going of them, the coming and going of men and death, and life, the movement, the talk, the sound of machinery, the oratory, think of the pain in America and the fear and the deep inward longing of all things alive in America.”

With this great quote from William Saroyan in The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze, James Houston sets the tone for his novel Snow Mountain Passage as a drama of “inward longings” that prompted thousands to pack their lives up into a covered wagon and strike out for a better life. Early in the book Jim Reed exclaims to his wife Margaret, who suffers from chronic, severe headaches, “Suppose we could travel to a place where you would never have another headache?  Isn’t that worth considering?” And he eagerly reads to her from Lansford Hastings’ Emigrant’s Guide describing California, “a place free of pestilence, surrounded with pasturelands and sunny valleys where everything can grow and with unlimited water, no mosquitoes, no malaria.” As the wagons gather in Independence Missouri in 1846, ready to set out on the long journey west, these travelers felt “history gathering like a wind, like a river current that could not be resisted.” Jim Reed imagines that his wagon train will be among the earliest to arrive in California.  His wife lays out a tablecloth wherever she can find a patch of grass.  “We’re going to stay civilized,” she says, “no matter how far into the wilderness we may wander.”

If you are reading this wonderful novel and ready to talk about it with others, our next book discussion is this coming Saturday at 10:00 a.m.  We will meet at the Heritage Museum on Donlon Way, where Museum Director, Elizabeth Isles, and her volunteers will have for us a light pioneer breakfast of biscuits and bacon to set the mood.  After discussing the book, volunteer docents will be ready to give you a tour of the Museum an/or the Pioneer Cemetary.  It is so fitting to have a discussion of this book at the Museum where the permanent exhibit so carefully renders  the westward journey of Dublin pioneers.  Please join us Saturday morning!

 

Books Loose in Dublin!

Lions and tigers and books, oh my! 

Have you seen “wild” copies of Snow Mountain Passage and Patty Reed’s Doll in your neighborhood?   The library has released over 30 copies of the books that are hopefully moving from house to house throughout the Dublin.  These wild books have a label on the inside front page that says: 

I’m not lost…I’m a Dublin Reads book! 

Books were released at the library and the Dublin Heritage Center.  We’d like to track the movement of these books so if you have one or have passed one along, please comment on this entry and let us know where the book has traveled so far! After you’ve read and released the book be sure to participate in a discussion group.  The next one meets Thursday October 18 at 12:30 in the group study room at the library.

 

Dublin Reads

What would it be like if everyone in Dublin read and discussed the same book? Well, Dublin Library is launching a major reading event called “Dublin Reads.”  Half the fun of reading a good book is talking about  it — this program gets the whole community talking about the same book.

The chosen book is Snow Mountain Passage by James D. Houston.  In the 1840s, thousands of pioneers sought a better life by heading West.  Among the many who attempted this difficult journey was a party lead by George Donner and James Frazier Reed. Inspired in part by the glowing descriptions of California as a “new Eden,” the Donner party started west out of Springfield, Illinois, in 1846.  In vivid, cadenced prose, Snow Mountain Passage tells the story of these ill-fated emigrants who found themselves stranded in the Sierras during the Winter of 1846-47.

Copies of the book are ready for you to pick up at the Library and will also be seeded around the community.  The Dublin Friends of the Library have purchased multiple copies that people can “read and release” into the community — to a neighbor, at Starbucks, and other locations. By filling in the log inside the book, we’ll know where in the community the book has been.

During the course of the series, the Library is offering drop-in book discussion groups, film showings of the PBS documentary The Donner Party: an American Experience, and a series of Sunday afternoon Chautauqua programs that bring to life the historical context of the time period covered by the novel. You can get a full listing of programs on the library’s website. Our grand finale is a visit with author James D. Houston on April 13, 2008, so there is plenty of time to get involved!

Dublin Reads is offering a unique component differentiating it from similar “one city, one book” programs: the inclusion of a children’s book, Patty Reed’s Doll by Rachel Laurgaard. It was important to Library staff, if we were going to take on such an ambitious program, that it be all-inclusive and intergenerational. By including Patty Reed’s Doll as an option for children, people will have the chance to make this a family activity.

Join the journey! Attend a program, create your own reading group, pass the book along to a friend, discuss both books around the dinner table.