2006 Santa Monica Citywide Reads Features Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date:       December 13, 2005
Contact:  Julie MacDonald, Public Services Librarian, (310) 434-2644
 

The featured book for 2006 Santa Monica Citywide Reads is Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer.

Sponsored by the City of Santa Monica and the Santa Monica Public Library, Citywide Reads is a community reading program that invites residents and visitors to Santa Monica to read and discuss the novel in book clubs held around the city.

The unique Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close follows nine-year-old Oskar’s search to learn more about a key found in his deceased father’s closet after September 11, 2001.  "This novel offers a view of the brave new world of post-September 11 New York though the eyes of nine-year-old Oskar Schell.  Oskar’s father died in the catastrophe, and the boy’s quest to find answers about his father lead to new questions about loss and love," says Carol Jago, chair of Santa Monica High School’s English department and a member of the Citywide Reads Advisory Committee. "Like all great stories, this one has places for laughing and places for crying.  It also includes photos, drawings, and visual images that complement the text."

Jonathan Safran Foer published his first novel, Everything is Illuminated, in 2002.  It won the Guardian Book Prize and the National Jewish Book Award.  The New Yorker and The Paris Review have published his short stories.  In addition, he wrote a libretto for the German National Opera House in Berlin.  Houghton Mifflin published Jonathan Safran Foer’s second novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, in 2005.  Publishers Weekly wrote, "…Foer demonstrates once again that he is one of the few contemporary writers willing to risk sentimentalism in order to address great questions of truth, love, and beauty." It is available in audiobook and downloadable audiobook and will be available in paperback in March 2006.

Santa Monica Citywide Reads takes place April 3 to May 6, 2006, and features free public book discussion groups led by volunteer facilitators held in coffeehouses, bookstores, libraries, and other venues. The author will appear in Santa Monica on Sunday, April 23, 2006 and present a reading.  Related events, such as programs on the future of fiction and America post- 9/11, are being planned. For information about Citywide Reads, visit www.smpl.org/cwr, or call the Santa Monica Public Library at (310) 458-8600.

      # # #

This page was last updated on 03/07/06.