Santa Monica Citywide Reads Goes Online and Interactive

Santa Monica, California – Santa Monica Citywide Reads goes online with a blog, www.santamonicacitywidereads.blogspot.com and a partnership with www.bookcrossing.com to distribute Citywide Reads books around Santa Monica.  

Citywide Reads encourages everyone in Santa Monica to read the same book at the same time and come together in community book groups and special events to discuss it.  The program will run from April 12 to May 17 and features Jim Lynch’s The Highest Tide, a story of a thirteen-year-old boy who spends one transformative summer navigating the mysteries of his beloved Puget Sound surroundings and his relationships with family and friends. 

Blogs, or web logs, are frequently updated websites with postings in chronological order on which people can comment.  Www.santamonicacitywidereads.blogspot.com will contain up to date and in-depth information about the book, author, and special events, and will provide community members an opportunity to respond to the book and programs and to start a dialogue with others. 

Santa Monica Citywide Reads is partnering with www.bookcrossing.com to reach new participants.  Bookcrossing is a free site that registers books and then tracks them as they make their way around Santa Monica and perhaps the globe.  Participants can write comments and reviews and let people know where they are leaving the book next.  Fifty copies of The Highest Tide will be placed in high traffic and easily accessible places around Santa Monica during the month of March.  They can be found logging onto www.bookcrossing.com, or they can be discovered serendipitously.  The promotion is sponsored by the Friends of the Santa Monica Public Library.

“We are excited to provide more opportunities for our community to connect through a good book,” says Greg Mullen, City Librarian.  “We hope that even more people will enjoy our Citywide Reads program.”

For more information, please call (310) 458-8600, stop by a Santa Monica Citywide Reads Library or visit the Citywide Reads website www.smpl.org/cwr.

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This page was last updated on 03/11/08.