CNY Reads Announces 2007-08 Community-Reading Selection

SYRACUSE — The community-reading program CNY Reads has announced its 2007-08 selection, “Mountains Beyond Mountains,” by Tracy Kidder, an account of the remarkable Dr. Paul Farmer and his mission to solve global health problems in Haiti and elsewhere. The CNY Reads consortium selected the book from a list of 10 nominations. Tracy Kidder may be best known, especially within the computing community, for his Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Soul of a New Machine.”He is the authorof six other nonfiction titles including “House” and “My Detachment, a Memoir,” about being a Vietnam War veteran.

“Mountains Beyond Mountains” is also the selection of the Shared Reading Program at Syracuse University this fall. By choosing the same selection, CNY Reads and the university pave the way for their communities to jointly participate in a variety of activities related to the book’s wealth of topics, such as global health care, socioeconomic disparity, agriculture, personal activism and more. Both the CNY Reads and SU communities will have opportunities to hear Tracy Kidder speak November 6 as part of the University Lecture series and November 7 as part of the Gifford Lecture series.

CNY Reads sponsored nearly 15 events in honor of last year’s selection, “The Kite Runner,” by Khaled Hosseini. The programs, which concluded at the end of April, included a lecture by SU Religion Department Chairwoman Dr. Tazim Kassam, film showings, book discussions, workshops and programs featuring Afghan folk tales and kite-making. In addition, high school students submitted 36 entries for the CNY Reads Writing and Poetry Contest, and six winners were announced April 19. Shared Reading students and faculty donated about 300 copies of the book for distribution to area high school students. CNY Reads hopes to make copies of “Mountains Beyond Mountains” available in the same way.
CNY Reads promotes reading, research, discovery, and a sharing of perspectives among Central New Yorkers by encouraging them to read the same book and participate in programs related to the content and themes of that book. Onondaga County Public Library leads the CNY Reads consortium, which comprises representatives from Onondaga Historical Association, Interfaith works and other Central New York cultural, educational, and social service organizations. For more information, visit the library’s Web site at www.onlib.org.

OCPL will have additional copies of “Mountains Beyond Mountains” in paperback, audiobook and book club kit formats, available for checkout through any of the OCPL’s 30 libraries throughout the county.