A boy, a tiger, and a boat

A boy, a bengal, and a boat

It sounds like a joke, right? But we’re serious – this month’s First Friday Film (tomorrow night, April 5, at 6PM) stars the film based on the book Life of Pi.

The film recently won four Academy Awards from eleven nominations, including Best Director. The book won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction, the 2003 Boeke Prize (a South African novel award), and the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature in Best Adult Fiction for years 2001–2003. And did we mention that the book has sold over 10 million copies worldwide? Not bad for a book that got rejected by five publishing houses!

So what’s all the hubbub about? Here’s the gist:

“After the sinking of a cargo ship, a solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the wild blue Pacific. The only survivors from the wreck are a sixteen-year-old boy named Pi, a hyena, a wounded zebra, an orangutan—and a 450-pound royal bengal tiger. The scene is set for one of the most extraordinary and beloved works of fiction in recent years.”

Los Angeles Times Book Review called it “A story to make you believe in the soul-sustaining power of fiction.”

Get your library copy in these formats:

• Regular print
• Large print
• Downloadable e-book
• Audiobook
• Downloadable Audiobook
• DVD
• Blu-ray

For more information, contact the Reference Desk at 503-682-2744 or reference@wilsonvillelibrary.org.

Adult Winter Reading Program coming to an end

That’s right. You have exactly 4 days to turn in your completed Tic-Tac-Toe Card and Book Log for entry into the grand prize drawing featuring a Kindle Touch and a Wilsonville Gift Basket.

Okay, I think it’s four days. Maybe it’s five.  I can never figure out how to count the days right. Either way, make sure to turn in your cards by 8 p.m. on Monday, March 12th.

And if you haven’t seen it, Kallen Kentner wrote a fun and inspiring “thank you” to the Adult Winter Reading Program in this week’s Wilsonville Spokesman. If you have a subscription to the Spokesman , you’ll still have to log in to view the entire article. However, copies are available at the Library in our newspaper section to read at your leisure.

Don’t have enough time to make the Adult Winter Reading Program deadline? Don’t fret! You have three months until the Adult Summer Reading Program starts in June.

Which means three months to get your reading lists ready . . .

What is a classic book?

As part of our Adult Winter Reading Program theme “Cozy Up with a Classic,” we’ve been asked “What is a classic?”

How do you define classic books? Maybe like this:

“Classics are those great pieces of literature considered worthy to be studied in English classes of high school or college.”

Or perhaps this:

“Classics are books your fathers give you and you keep them to give to your children”

 How many of us had to slog through some “classic” in high school and were then immediately turned off? For me, it seemed like every classic novel we had to read in “American Literature” class was a downer – The Scarlet Letter, The Jungle, The Grapes of Wrath, The Great Gatsby, Lord of the Flies, Ordinary People. I asked my teacher if there was some classic that had a happy ending. She thought about it and said no.

And then I started to think about my own question. Are there “classic” books with happy endings? Surely we can’t see depressing books as the only ones worthy of preservation. What would that say about humanity?

Which was when I remembered that yes, indeed, there were classics with happy endings: Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, The Odyssey, The Thousand and One Nights, Shakespeare’s comedies.

So what defines a “classic”? Some would say timelessness, that you can read the book today and still enjoy it. Others would argue for universality, that the book features ideas or situations that we can appreciate as part of the human condition (family, war, love, etc.).  And then some simplify it to a book that “can be read again and again with ever-deepening pleasure.”

I would argue that a classic is one that can be read over and over and each time provide something different but still enjoyable. Time is not a limiting factor for me – there are books written in the past 50 years (or even last year) that I could point to and say, “Yes, that’s a classic.”

For what others have considered as classics, check out the lists below.

Classics for all time

The “Great Books” list to end all lists

The reading list for St. John’s College – the curriculum is focused entirely on the Great Books

The Guardian’s 100 Greatest Novels of all Time

The Telegraph lists their “Perfect Library” of 110 best books

Project Gutenberg – check out their “Top 100″ of most popular classic e-book downloads

NEH list of summertime favorites – classic novels divided by age group

Modern Classics

Entertainment Weekly’s “The New Classics” – The 100 best reads from 1983-2008

Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels

Classics of Science Fiction – a thoroughly researched list by James Wallace Harris

How do you define a “classic” book? What are your favorite classic books? What classics are you ashamed to admit you haven’t read? Let us know in the comments below.