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Vail Valley Voices: Let’s read ‘Doc’ together

Eileen Miller
Vail, CO, Colorado

Did you know there are 116 book clubs registered with the Bookworm of Edwards?

These book clubs register themselves so members can receive discounts on reading choices they will discuss at meetings and so they can be contacted to participate in the Bookworm’s special events.

We all know that everyone who loves to read is not part of a book club, though. Book-lovers all over our valley, not in one of the 116 book clubs, patronize our libraries and bookstores.



In a book club or not, it is probable that when you read something especially entertaining, stimulating, inspirational or enlightening, you yearn to share that experience with someone else.

Our area’s recently launched “One Book, One Valley” initiative gives us all that chance – our once-a-year communitywide book club!

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We are just one community in a long line of communities that have launched a reading project for its citizens.

Such a valleywide event gives us a book in common about which to converse, not only in planned discussion groups, but at grocery stores, post offices, restaurants or any other places we gather.

The first “community read” in the U.S. was organized in Seattle by Nancy Pearl in association with the public library there in 1998, two years after Oprah Winfrey introduced her national book club for viewers.

Just Google “community read” and you will find names of the many communities that have organized events around a book, including Denver. Universities, high schools, elementary schools and even families have discovered the joy of reading the same book together.

Have you picked up or downloaded your copy of our first “community read” title yet? It is a historical fiction novel,” Doc,” by Mary Doria Russell.

The driving force behind this project is Vail town librarian Lori A. Barnes. She assumed her position in 2007, and has been a ball of fire developing library programs and awareness.

She resurrected the Friends of the Vail Public Library and with this group has gathered a committee to organize our first “community read,” drawing in the Eagle Valley Library District, Colorado Mountain College, the Bookworm, and the Eagle County Historical Society as collaborators.

The first hurdle for the committee was choosing a title! Impossible to choose a title everyone will be happy with? Community members are as diverse as book titles.

When the historical novel “Doc,” came to the committee’s attention, everyone in the group sparked up. It is a 2011 publication about Doc Holliday and has high appeal to men, women and young adults. Doc Holliday lived in Leadville for a while and died in the Glenwood Springs Hotel in 1887. Doc’s gravesite is in the Pioneer Cemetery in Glenwood. These local ties give our community a personal interest in the historical setting.

The author has crafted a novel full of Doc’s family and personal relationships and woven in a fictional murder mystery involving Doc and his friend Wyatt Earp. Doc Holliday was so much more than a gun-slinging gambler!

Organize your own family or neighborhood book discussions! For sure, read “Doc” yourself and find that talking with others about aspects of a book you have read in common can reveal new insights into yourself and others.

Scheduled activities revolving around “Doc” are planned throughout the valley from now until April 19, when the author, Mary Doria Russell, will meet with everyone at Colorado Mountain College at 6 p.m.

Watch the papers for news and other events. Also, see http://www.colorado

mtn.edu/onebook.


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