Scheduling Update

A few changes have been made to the Somerville Reads events calendar. Here's the latest:

March 31st-April 30, with reception on April 10th @ 3 pm—Exhibit of food-themed art by elementary school children from Somerville Public Schools. Central Library

April 4th @ 7 pm—Potluck with a mystery theme. Central Library

April 5th @ 7 pm—Discussion of Farm City led by Jessie Banhazl of Green City Growers. Central Library

April 11th @ 7 pm—Community Storytelling Open Mike Night. Central Library

April 14th @ 2 pm—Stone Soup. Central Library

April 17th @ 7 pm—Discussion of Seed Folks for kids ages 9 to 12 led by Cathy Piantigini, Supervisor of Somerville Public Library's Children's Services. Central Library

April 21st @ 1 pm—Somerville Reads Celebration, including music by the Michael J. Epstein Memorial Library, a community potluck—bring a dish to share (please list ingredients) , vote for your favorite dish, maybe win a prize!—and the official debut of our new community cookbook. Central Library

April 22nd @ 1 pm—Discussion of Seed Folks led by Jim Boyd, Head Coordinator for Somerville Community Gardens, and Cathy Piantigini. Walnut Street Community Garden.

April 25th @ 7 pm—Discussion of Farm City led by Somerville Public Library librarian Kevin O'Kelly. Sherman Café, 257 Washington St.

Schedule of Events Finalized

Slowly but surely, Somerville Reads 2012 has come together. For a downloadable .pdf of all events, click here. More information on all of these events will be coming soon, so please check back!

Recipes Wanted for Community Cook Book

One of our most exciting projects for Somerville Reads 2012 is the creation of a community cook book! Nothing brings people together quite like food, so we're asking all of our neighbors to share some favorite recipes. Maybe you have a specialty that people always want you to bring to parties, or a recipe for something that the kids ask you to make over and over. Or it might be a treasured family recipe from your culture, or a favorite that features local ingredients. Whatever you choose, we're looking forward to your contribution. We don't know if we'll be able to print all of the recipes - it depends on how many submissions we get and whether there are duplicates - but we'll use as many as we can. If you didn't invent the recipe yourself, please make sure that you include credit where it's due (ie: "found this recipe in my mother's old Fanny Farmer" or "clipped this out of the Globe Sunday magazine years ago".)

There are three ways to submit a recipe:

• drop it off at any Somerville Public Library location, care of Ellen Jacobs or

• e-mail it to ejacobs@minlib.net or

• mail it to:
  Somerville Public Library
  79 Highland Avenue
  Somerville, MA 02143
  Attention: Ellen Jacobs

The deadline for submitting recipes is March 1st.

Once we've compiled all of the recipes, we're going to print copies of the cook book and sell them at our kickoff event, a potluck meal at the Central Library on Saturday, March 31st beginning at 1:00 p.m. We hope that people will bring lots of the dishes featured in the cookbook, but anything you'd like to contribute will be welcome! (Please make sure to list the ingredients so that people with allergies or other food restrictions can be informed.) Everyone who comes will have a chance to vote for their favorite dish, and five lucky winners will receive prizes of gift certificates donated by local businesses that are sponsoring the event: Dave's Fresh Pasta, Guru, Highland Kitchen, India Palace, and Sherman Café. Proceeds from the sale of the cook books will go toward future programming at the Libraries.

So what are you waiting for - send in your recipe today!

Somerville Reads 2012

The book for this year's Somerville Reads is Farm City, writer Novella Carpenter's engaging account of starting and running a farm on a vacant lot in Oakland. The book will be a starting point for a city-wide discussion of food: what we eat, why we eat and what should we eat? We'll talk about what it means to eat sustainably in an urban area in the Northeast.

There will also be a strong children's component to Somerville Reads this year. We'll be having two discussions of Paul Fleischman's book Seedfolks, a program based on the folktale Stone Soup, and an exhibit of food-themed art by elementary school students. More details on all of this will be coming soon.

Our kickoff event will start at 1 pm on March 31 at the Somerville Central Library, 79 Highland Avenue. We're having a potluck (so bring one of your favorite dishes) and music by the Michael J. Epstein Memorial Library. We'll also hold a vote on the potluck's best dishes, and the winning cooks will receive gift certificates donated by local restaurants, including Highland Kitchen, Dave's Fresh Pasta, India Palace, Guru and Sherman Cafe. The following week the Mystery Book Club invites everyone to participate in a potluck of dishes inspired by their favorite mystery books, and SPL will host a discussion of Farm City led by Jessie Banzahl of Green City Growers. SPL will also host its own version of The Moth Radio Hour with a community storytelling event (all stories must be food-themed) on April 11.

To recap, the first Somerville Reads events:

Saturday, Mar. 31, 1 p.m.: Kickoff
Wednesday, April 4, 7 p.m.: Mystery Potluck
Thursday, April 5th, 7 p.m.: Discussion of Farm City led by Jessie Banzahl
Wednesday, April 11, 7 p.m.: Community Storytelling
Saturday, April 14, 2 p.m.: Stone Soup
Tuesday, April 17th, 7 p.m.: Discussion of Seedfolks for kids ages 9-12

The events listed above are all taking place at the Central Library, but some of our later events will be in other locations - we'll keep you posted. Stay tuned for further details. In the meantime, relax and enjoy some music:

Our Second Somerville Reads....

..is done. Thanks to everyone who participated. Now a question: what do you suggest for next year's Somerville Reads?

Somerville Reads Film: Hester Street

Join us at the Central Library tonight at 7 for our last film for Somerville Reads, the 1975 drama Hester Street. Jake is a Russian Jewish immigrant living on the Lower East Side who is enthusiastically Americanizing himself. All in all, he's doing pretty well. He's got a job and a girlfriend. But then his wife Gitl arrives in America, bring with her their young son. Not only does Jake have to deal with the complications this creates for his personal life, he also tries to pull Gitl away from the old Ashkenazi ways that she clings to so desperately.

Praising the film for its pathos and wit, New York Times critic Richard Eder described the experience of seeing this film about the familiar theme of Americanization as like seeing a "familiar play—A Midsummer Night's Dream as done by Peter Brook or The Wild Duck as done by Sweden's Royal Dramatic Theater—lit up by an intent and flowering mind." The acting in the film is stellar. The best performance is by Carol Kane (Gitl), who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.

We hope to see you here!

The Love of Strangers

One of my favorite passages in The Namesake poignantly illustrates the isolation of the members of the Ganguli family. They love each other, the parents want the children around as much as possible, but in so many ways they don't know each other. One November night Gogol takes the train back home from Yale to spend Thanksgiving with his father, Ashoke (his mother and sister have gone to India for three weeks). Gogol's train is late. He can't reach his father. He arrives at the station two hours late. His father is waiting for him.

"I hope you haven't been standing out in the cold all this time," Gogol says and from his father's lack of response he knows that this is exactly what he has done.

Then Gogol asks himself what's actually going on with his father, but admits that he won't find out.

Gogol wonders what it is like for his father to be without his mother and Sonia. He wonders if he is lonely. But his father is not the type to admit such things, to speak openly of his moods, his desires, his needs.

But when they reach home, Gogol's father does open up to him, possibly for the first time. Ashoke tells him why he's named Gogol. Interestingly, he doesn't wait for them to go inside. They sit in the car in the driveway, as if once they stepped into that house they would be drawn back into their old routines, their customary silences. Somehow, in the car, with just the two of them, Ashoke is free to talk. He tells Gogol about the train wreck, about the book of Nikolai Gogol's stories that saved his life, about the following year in bed, while his shattered bones healed.

Gogol listens, stunned, his eyes on his father's profile. Though there are only inches between them, for an instant his father is a stranger, a man who has kept a secret, has survived a tragedy, a man whose past he does not fully know. A man who is vulnerable, who has suffered in an inconceivable way.

"Why don't I know this about you?" Gogol says. His voice sounds harsh, accusing, but his eyes well with tears. "Why haven't you told me this until now?"

He doesn't understand why his father hasn't told him. And he doesn't know how to handle this knowledge, he's not quite sure what it means, for either of them.

"Is that what you think of when you think of me," Gogol asks him. Do I remind you of that night?"

"Not at all," his father says eventually, one hand going to his ribs, a habitual gesture that has baffled Gogol until now. "You remind me of everything that followed."

For that moment at least, father and son connect.

Book Talk: Immigration, India and Women

Join us this Wed. at 7 pm at the Central Library for a talk by award-winning Brandeis Professor Harleen Singh. She'll discuss the themes of immigration and women's roles in The Namesake and other novels of the Indian Diaspora. It's sure to be fascinating!

Book Discussion and screening of In America

Tonight you have a choice of two Somerville Reads events in two different venues.

At 7:00 p.m., Kevin O'Kelly will lead a discussion of The Namesake at Sherman Cafe (257 Washington Street.) Kevin is a librarian at the Somerville Public Library and a writer. His book reviews appear regularly in The Boston Globe.

Also at 7:00, we'll be screening Jim Sheridan's In America at the Central Library. This is the second film in the Somerville Reads Film Festival, which explores the experiences of immigrants to America.

Amazon.com says, "In America stars the incandescent Samantha Morton and Paddy Considine as two young Irish parents who have lost their only son. Trying to run away from their grief, they move (illegally) to a junkie-infested apartment building in New York City with their two daughters, Christy (Sarah Bolger) and Ariel (Emma Bolger). Though they struggle with meager jobs and suffocatingly hot weather, a friendship with an artist in an apartment below them (Djimon Hounsou) becomes a catalyst that allows them to rebuild their family. In America is splendidly acted throughout - of particular note are the two girls, real-life sisters whose on-screen charisma is clearly a family trait. But it's Morton who anchors the movie; her every emotion seems to glow from her skin. The commitment of the actors keeps the movie compelling, despite some dangerously sentimental patches."

This free film series is sponsored by the Friends of the Library. All are welcome to attend.

What about the Women?

As much as I love The Namesake, one of the aspects of the book that troubles me is the lack of development of certain female characters. Ashima and Moushumi are the only women whose heads we can get inside. But what about Maxine? It's the most serious relationship of Gogol's life so far. We learn a lot about how he feels about her, her parents, their entire world. What does she feel about him?

An even more serious omission is the lack of any character development of Sonia, Gogol's sister. We get only the slightest glimpses of her as a person. We see that as a teenager she's got more of a rebellious edge than Gogol had: dyeing all her clothes black, threatening to put a blond streak in her hair, having a secret boyfriend. We learn that as a child she thought Sesame Street was an actual place. She has a warm relationship with her brother, evidenced by her nickname for him, "Goggles." (I love it that she calls him "Goggles!")

Her existence raises so many questions: what was it like being a girl in that family? Was it easier in any way? Or was it just harder? What were her relationships with guys like? Gogol's peculiar burden was his name. Did she have one?

Sonia's a character we should have had a chance to know.