Eighty bookstores and 210 authors participated in this year's second annual Read Around New England (RANE) celebration sponsored by the New England Booksellers Association throughout October.
"The intention was to draw awareness to what bookstores do and to celebrate the role bookstores play in the community," explained RANE coordinator Ginie Thorp, who organized several events, including double readings with Jodi Picoult and Chris Bohjalian, the two most recent fiction winners of the New England Book Award. "I think RANE's a wonderful thing overall, because it promotes independent stores," Katherine Nevins, co-owner of MainStreet BookEnds of Warner in Warner, N.H., told PW. "October is a big time for us anyway."
Some bookstores went all out with special events, such as the three-day Brattleboro Literary Festival featuring Grace Paley, Tracy Kidder and Archie Mayor, cosponsored by The Book Cellar. Others booked unusual celebrations such as Harvard Book Store's confab to mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March. Held at the Boston Public Library and co-sponsored by the Library of America and Viking Books, the event drew more than 200 people to hear James Wood, editor of Saul Bellow: Novels, 1944-1953 (Library of America); critic Stanley Crouch, who wrote the introduction to the re-release of 1970's Mr. Sammler's Planet (Penguin, Jan. 2004); and novelists Martin Amis and Jonathan Wilson. "We're such supporters of NEBA; we're happy to work with them," said Harvard Book Store marketing manager Amanda Darling, who put out special RANE bookmarks in the store.
For some booksellers, RANE provided the structure to create, or expand, a citywide reading program. Bunch of Grapes in Vineyard Haven, Mass., which introduced a One Book-One Island program on Martha's Vineyard to coincide with last year's RANE, set up a reading program with adults assigned Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 and kids reading Carl Hiaasen's Hoot. "With so much going on in the world today, we wanted a book that wasn't just about the Island," said store manager Robby Bick. "Fahrenheit 451 seemed so timely with the U.S.A. Patriot Act." Participating Vineyard libraries and the store used the One Book-One Island events to focus attention on banned books and censorship. Anthony Lewis, Ward Just and Richard North Patterson took part in a panel on First Amendment rights; Bicks joined several other Islanders to talk about personal experiences with censorship. A Parade of Banned Books gave kids a chance to rally for free speech dressed as their favorite character from a banned book.
Westwinds Bookshop chose a local classic, Hawthorne's The House of Seven Gables, to inaugurate its one town-one book program. For Westwinds owner Sissy Greenbaum, it was an effective way to launch the concept in her community. "We chose to do it in October because of RANE and because the Duxbury Library does a Bookfest then," said Greenbaum. Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley, Mass., also selected a local work, but of more recent vintage, for its second citywide reading program: Madeleine Blais's Uphill Walkers: A Memoir of a Family (Grove), which takes place in the neighboring town.
