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The organizers of One Book Lambton have received great news after Canadian mystery writer Louise Penney’s “Still Life” selection that Lambton County residents are encouraged to read and talk about this winter and spring.
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This is the fourth year of the initiative whereby local residents are encouraged to read a selected book and participate in discussions and special events hosted by the Lambton County Library.
Andrea Basra of the county library said they had already selected Penny’s first novel when they learned Amazon Prime Video would feature Three Pines, a TV series based on the author’s character, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, and starring British actor Alfred Molina. .
“It was a nice little feature,” Basra said.
And in due time. Amazon released the series for streaming just a month before One Book announced that it had chosen the first of 18 Penny books as its 2023 title.
Her latest book, A World of Curiosities, comes out in 2022. Penny was most recently known for co-writing the 2021 thriller, State of Terror, with Hillary Clinton.
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Penny’s 2005 anthology Still Life follows Lambton’s earlier one-book selections about a mother and daughter, every step they take and why they go.
“I’m really surprised that Louise Penny didn’t come earlier,” Basra said.
“It’s really amazing, and now the hugely popular Canadian writer has reached a level of fame where Amazon wants to share her characters and build her world,” Basra said.
A former CBC anchor, Penny has won awards for her best-selling crime novels.
In Still Life, Gamache and his team of detectives are called to the scene of a suspicious murder in a rural village south of Montreal.
“She’s quintessentially Canadian and very good at creating the French-Canadian Quebec experience,” Basra said. “You can imagine exactly the criteria you describe.”
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One Book’s goal, Basra said, is to “unite everyone in Lambton County by reading a book, sharing a book, and then exploring programming and discussion related to that book’s themes and themes.”
Copies of Still Life can be reserved and borrowed at Lambton County Library branches, as well as using the online catalog at library.ca.
Information on special programs and events is available online at onebooklambton.ca.
She added that more than 580 books were loaned or distributed, and more than 150 people participated in nine events organized around last year’s selection.
“I think we get more involved every year,” Basra said, even though One Book Lambton has had to navigate the restrictions of the pandemic.
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“What a time to launch a great community initiative,” she said. “It was really difficult.”
Basra said it has made some changes for this year, including not hosting an event with the book’s author.
“We really want to focus more on reading the book and getting people in the community to go out and participate in events and discussions,” she said.
The change also affects the selection process for project writers as it is no longer based on whether or not a writer is available to participate in a local event.
“Going forward, we look forward to more community participation in the selection process,” Basra said.
The goal of One Book Lambton, she said, is to encourage literacy, reading, community participation and to see “how books, whether fiction or non-fiction, can be connected to our society in one way or another”.
pmorden@postmedia.com
