Chicago has been running this program for two seasons now -- in the fall the book was "To Kill a Mockingbird", this spring the book is "Night" by Elie Wiesel.

Bookstores love this program for a variety of reasons. 1) It gets customers into their store 2) Cross selling of products 3) Literary discussions

Of course, some people say that this program is a joke. Nobody would actually read a book because the mayor asked you to (even if your mayor is Richard Daley) and it's just a bunch of libarians who chose this silly book.

I read a WSJ piece on this program, and something actually caught my eye -- some authors refuse to have academic versions of their books available because that forces students to read their books, and then wouldn't read anything else by them in the future since they were forced to read earlier works by them.

So ... what are your thoughts on "One City, One Book"?

I don't know anything about it. But when I was working at B Daltons, we sold a bunch of Reading Rainbow books whenever one particular book was featured on the show. I think that that was good because children need to be taught at an early age that reading is fun.

I don't understand that last bit. By the time American students have reached high school, too many of them have already been taught that math is too hard, reading is boring, and science is an unexplainable system. They will never read again. The remaining students are not going to be turned off an author because he was required reading when they were seventeen.

Anything encouraging adults to read is good, because they may have fallen out of the habit.

They are trying this in my city (also starting with To Kill A Mocking Bird)...I think it's a good thing mainly because you could go to a discussion group that has just read that book (not necessarily sponsered by a bookstore) and hear different points of view about it. It might also motivate people to try something different and see if literary societies form in my city; as well as pick up something that they should have read earlier (or read so long ago they can't remember).

If you don't want to participate, you don't have to. Personally, I don't see any ads for it in my city; just a couple of articles in the local paper.