Read ME 2018: A statewide summer reading program with a Maine twist

The Southwest Harbor Library is a participant in this year’s Maine Humanities Council summer reading program.  We will be hosting author Susan Hand Shetterly later this summer.  Keep an eye out in Upcoming Events on  our webpage or call the library at 244-7065 for more information as it becomes available.

“It was great to experience the statewide effort. We knew we were part of a larger group. It was impressive that the sixteen counties were involved.” – Participating Librarian

Read ME is a statewide program presented in partnership with Maine State Library that gets Maine’s adults all reading the same books—by Maine authors and recommended by a Maine author. View this year’s participating libraries!

Last year’s pilot of Read ME was a great success, with 62 libraries participating across the state.  We know each featured title circulated over 400 times! There were several book groups, author talks, and other awesome programming that connected with the Read ME titles. Find out below what we have in store for this year!

Maine author Paul Doiron selects books by two lesser-known Maine authors for Read ME.

Goals

  • Connect Maine’s adult reading community through shared reading experiences.
  • Support libraries in their work to provide quality adult summer reading initiatives.
  • Elevate upcoming Maine authors.
  • Paul Doiron’s picks

 

 

Fiction


River Talk

Price: $13.88

“The short stories in CB Anderson’s River Talk are about Mainers: folks you went to school with and have known forever, others you hear speaking in foreign tongues on the street, newcomers, neighbors, maybe even yourself. What makes this book so special, so moving, is Anderson’s passionate commitment to making all of these people not just recognizable but relatable. If you’re looking for a book about the ways people in Maine actually live, now, today, you need to read this small masterpiece.”

Non-fiction

Settled in the Wild: Notes from the Edge of Town

Price: $11.75

“More than in other places, Maine people live close to nature. Some by accident, others by design. Susan Hand Shetterly’s collection of lyrical short essays, Settled in the Wild: Notes from the Edge of Town, is therefor a book intended for all of us. It’s about watching deer drift through the field at dusk and about leaving the window open in April to hear spring arrive with the first piping of the peepers. It’s about the familiar, the secret, and the strange, written by an artist whose gift it is to help us see our shared environment as we’ve never seen it before.”