The Glenbard Parent Series has selected the critically acclaimed novel, The Things They Carried as it’s 2018 ONE BOOK GPS Community Read. Please join us when we will welcome Pulitzer Prize finalist author Tim O’Brien as the kick-off speaker for the 2018-19 year of programming.
They Carried, has become a reading staple for high-school level students across the country and includes aspects of memoir, novel, and short story. Here is a compelling book that displays intense sensitivity and insight into courage and fear and brings into question the way that subsequent generations will view the war. This international award winning novel has been translated in twenty languages and was selected in Amazon’s list of 100 Books to Read in a LifetimeMr. O’Brien and his insights into the Vietnam conflict were showcased on the 2018 Ken Burns PBS Documentary on the Vietnam War. Both The Things They Carried and Mr. O’Brien’s work Going After Cacciato are powerful and compelling stories of war.
This award winning written novel has been translated in twenty languages and was selected in Amazon’s list of 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime.
In 2005 The Things They Carried was named by the New York Times as one of the twenty-two best books of the last quarter century. It received the Chicago Tribune Heartland Award in fiction and was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. The French edi
tion of The Things They Carried received one of France’s most prestigious literary awards, the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger. The title story from The Things They Carried received the National Magazine Award and was selected by John Updike for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories of the Century. In the Lake of the Woods, published in 1994, was chosen by Time magazine as the best novel of that year. The book also received the James Fenimore Cooper Prize from the Society of American Historians and was selected as one of the ten best books of the year by The New York Times. In 2010, O’Brien received the Katherine Anne Porter Award, presented by the American Academy of Arts and Letters for a distinguished lifetime body of work. In November 2012, O’Brien received the Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award from the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation. In 2013, O’Brien received the Lifetime Achievement award from the Pritzker Military Library. O’Brien’s short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Atlantic, Esquire, Playboy, Harper’s, and numerous editions of The O. Henry Prize Stories and The Best American Short Stories. His novels have sold more than six million copies and have been translated into more than 20 languages.
CPDUs are available.
GPS is generously sponsored by CASE, Cebrin Goodman Center, College of DuPage, DuPage Medical Group, Emmy Gaffey Foundation, Glenbard Early Childhood Collaborative, DuPage County Health Department/PLT, Holiday Inn of Carol Stream and the Trust Company of Illinois, with additional support from public libraries: Bloomingdale, Glen Ellyn, Carol Stream, Glenside, Lombard, and Wheaton.
The Glenside Public Library District’s Reading Club has selected “The Things They Carried” for their August book discussion at 7 p.m Tuesday, August 28.
Printable Flyer for this event: Community Read – The Things They Carried with Tim O’Brien (PDF)
