What We’re Reading
THE SOCIETY-TO-MATCH-OUR-SCENERY BOOK CLUB:
A Continuing List of Books for Montanans new and old to read or re-read that speak to who we were, who we are, who we are becoming, and how these things came to be.
How are our books chosen? At The Montana Project, we believe some of the best literature moves people to the deeper emotions. We believe the response of passion to a work of art helps us resist the creep of numbness, burn-out, and fatigue that rises like warming coastlines; that obscures one’s clear vision like a blanket of August.
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We anticipate each year’s reading list to be a conversation; send us books you think should be read, and carried forward. Some of our initial favorites will be old chestnuts, well-known, though others, less so. It’s ideal for books to have been written by Montanans or people with a Montana connection, but not requisite; we remain open, certainly, to the idea that someone not-from-Montana might have singular and helpful insights that will help us go about the business of becoming better Montanans, or even better people. It’s not unprecedented for folks to sometimes see least clearly a thing that is right in front of them.
One of the requirements for an annual certificate in The STMOS Book Club (those who complete it each year will receive a certificate and bachelor’s degree from the non-accredited College of Hellgate—tuition-free, of course) is that each member must recommend a book, with a 1-3 page annotation—a personal response—about how and why the reader considers the book to be important for our time and place. Each month’s selection will be posted on our web page and will become part of the next year’s curriculum.
Every two months, poet Chris Dombrowski and fiction writer Rick Bass will visit, often with a guest, sometimes with the author as well, about one of our selections. (Public as well as Zoom events will be recorded and available on our website for those unable to attend a live event). The curriculum will be rigorous, and for graduation each member will be asked to write a short personal response to each book. (You can e-mail it to us at info@montanaproject.org, but we hope you’ll also consider printing and snail-mailing us your responses, which we will save to deposit each year in the archives of the Montana Historical Society, illustrative of our attitudes and sentiments in a time of deepest change, even as we strive to protect and preserve so much of that which we hold dear about Montana.
We’ll try to keep the page count lower in summer and fall, for obvious reasons: it’s Montana, duh. We’ll be outside. We’ll link you and these conversations to the scattered stars that are the constellation of our powerful independent bookstores around the state. We look forward to hearing from you.