If you’re looking for a good book to read this winter and want to be a part of a community event, you could participate in the “Big Read."
This year’s choice for the “Big Read” in Lane County is the comic memoir by Roz Chast, “Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant.”
The Shelton McMurphy Johnson House Museum and Wordcrafters of Eugene are hosting a series of events.
KLCC’s Rachael McDonald spoke with Leah Murray with the Shelton McMurphy Johnson House and asked her why the book was chosen.
Murray: The initial reason was we get a lot of phone calls at the house about: “I have this thing that my grandma left me, my mom left me, my aunt left me, my grandparents left me. What do I do with it?” And, so that's one of the things that Roz (Chast) talks about in this book is, what to do with her parents’ stuff when they move out of their apartment of 30-something years in Brooklyn. And she's just overwhelmed, just “I don't know what to do with this stuff.” That was the first kind of thing that struck me.
The second thing is she talks a lot about being estranged from her parents a lot in her adulthood, being an only child, and then dealing with these parents and all the things, and trying to come to some sort of resolution with her parents. And she gets it to some degree and not completely. And, I was fascinated by her using this medium, this comic, to process these feelings, to process what happened over this couple of year period. We have all been going through the last three years with COVID a significant amount of grief as a community as a whole. We're grieving for a lot of things, you know, and I have been trying to find a way for the museum to help with that, for the museum to make an impact on that. And this felt like a good way to do it. Giving people a way to look at this and process feelings and talk about feelings. Because we come together in book discussions and we talk about how did Roz process this? How does that make us feel? How do we take some of the lessons she learned and, and do that ourselves?
McDonald: As part of this “Big Read” there will be opportunities for these kinds of discussions in groups. How will that all work?
Murray: We are hosting, I think, it's about six or seven book discussions at the moment that are scheduled. The first one is Dec. 11 at the museum itself. There's gonna be some at the Springfield Library. There's going to be one at the Fern Ridge Library in February. We're gonna hold one at the River Road Annex with the River Road Library. I'm hosting one down in College Grove. So I'm trying to spread out in the community. If more community members are interested in hosting one, I'm happy to take those on. We're also going to be doing some, with Wordcrafters, we're going to be doing some processing with our own artwork with our own writing. So. we're gonna do some writing exercises and some fun things with that. And then at the end, in March, we're gonna do a community art project.
McDonald: And will Roz Chast be involved in any of these events?
Murray: So Roz, actually, we are speaking to Roz on Jan. 20 via Zoom. And so that is going to be a free public event. You just need to log into the Zoom. We'll be putting that out pretty soon. Wordcrafters is gonna host a watch party at their facility. Fern Ridge talked about maybe doing one at their facility and then people can log in from home.
The kick off event for The Big Read is Tuesday, Nov. 28 with University of Oregon Professor Alisa Friedman. It’s at the Springfield Public Library from 5 to 7 p.m.
