Region Reads program ready for 2011

Think of it as a huge book club

The libraries of North Idaho are joining forces for Our Region Reads, a program planned for 2011 to encourage as many regional residents as possible to read the same book, to talk about it, and to participate in programs related to the themes in the book.

The selection for 2011 is "Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet," by Jamie Ford.

This novel tells the story of Henry Lee, a boy of Chinese heritage who is 11 years old growing up in Seattle when the attack on Pearl Harbor marks the entrance of the United States into World War II. But it is also the story of Henry Lee late in his life when a surprising discovery in the old Panama Hotel in Seattle brings back memories of a time when Japanese-Americans were rounded up and sent to internment camps.

The background music for "Hotel" is the sound of jazz being played in Seattle's clubs and homes in the 1940s.

Author Jamie Ford is the great-grandson of Nevada mining pioneer Min Chung, who emigrated from Kaiping, China, to San Francisco in 1865, where he adopted the western name "Ford," thus confusing countless generations.

An award-winning short-story writer, Ford is an alumnus of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers and a survivor of Orson Card's Literary Boot Camp. Having grown up near Seattle's Chinatown, he now lives in Montana.

Ford will come to North Idaho in March as part of the related programs that will also look at the region's role in World War II, jazz, the Japanese Internment, the influence of Asian cultures in the Inland Northwest, and any number of related subjects. Information about Our Region Reads will be available at local libraries as the program develops and at www.ourregionreads.blogspot.com.