Over the past few decades, many, if not most, high school students have been assigned F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.” But, whether you read the book ages ago or last year, you may still want to know, “What’s so great about “The Great Gatsby”?” What about it makes it required reading? James St. Pierre will answer this question at a One Book, One Valley presentation on Thursday, October 8 at 7 p.m. at Granite State College in Conway.
Speaker James St. Pierre is an instructor of literature and writing at Granite State College and teaches English at Fryeburg Academy. One Book, One Valley is the Mount Washington Valley’s annual community read program. This year’s book is Chris Bohjalian’s “The Double Bind,” for which a series of book discussions and programs related to themes in the book–including this “What’s So Great About “The Great Gatsby” program–are taking place during the month of October in locations throughout the valley. In “The Double Bind” Bohjalian used characters and settings from “The Great Gatsby,” an approach that works because of readers’ familiarity with Fitzgerald’s novel.
One Book, One Valley is sponsored by ten area libraries, White Birch Books, the New Hampshire Humanities Council, the Tamworth Foundation, the Pequawket Foundation, the Believe in Books Literacy Foundation, and local libraries’ Friends groups. For more information about the One Book, One Valley community read project, including a full schedule of events and directions to locations, see https://onebookonevalley.wordpress.com.
One Book One Valley 