The 2007 One Book, One Lincoln selection has been made. Chosen was The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl, the non-fiction tale of ... well, you read the subtitle. I have never participated in OBOL, but The Missus tries to read some of the nominees each year. Upon reading the winner announcement this morning, she laughed. "They picked the one book I had absolutely no interest in reading," she said. Apparently one of the early descriptions she read included the scary adjectives "epic" and "long". She figured if the number of pages was one of the book's primary selling points, it wasn't a book she cared to read.
Do any of you plan to participate in OBOL this year? Have you already read The Worst Hard Time?
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They pick books every year that I have no interest in reading. I think they intentionally go out of their way to pick odd titles and avoid the mainstream. Why would a mainstream book be a bad idea?
Have you ever seen a music store employee recommend a CD that hit #1 on Billboard? Or a barista reccomend Folgers? Or a food critic reccomend McDonalds? My hope is that they are suggesting it because it is good stuff that we wouldn’t read otherwise.
Which is a safe bet because I typically only start reading one or two books a year and rarely finish them. Books are awesome, I love to read. Making the time to read them is another story entirely.
Kind of like jogging I suppose…
Valid points. However, if the goal were One Cup of Coffee, One Lincoln, and the intent was to get a whole bunch of new people to try the same thing, Starbucks may indeed recommend the best selling coffee. Or Homer’s may recommend a top-selling artist with broad appeal.
I thought the purpose was to get more people to read, to have conversations about the reading, etc.
True enough.
I loved the one book one Lincoln book last year (Devil in the white city), this year’s selection doesn’t interest me much.
It was a nice experience, though, reading a book that so many others were reading. I’ll probably give it a shot.
I still recommend Devil in the white city all the time. I need to buy it….
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