Want a Fight? Pick One Book for All New Yorkers:

‘An ad hoc group of librarians, bookstore owners, educators and others has quietly hatched a plan to turn New York City into a giant reading group. Over the last few weeks, the committee has convened to select a single book that the organizers hope to see assigned in city schools, discussed in groups at public libraries, promoted in local bookstores and read by millions of New Yorkers.

Plenty of other cities have read books together. Last year, Chicago drew national attention with a campaign to read To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, and since then, dozens of towns have followed suit, usually by selecting novels that impart a civic-minded message of cultural tolerance and racial harmony.

But just what book to recommend to a city of eight million souls where more than 100 languages are spoken has already turned out to be a ticklish question, one about politics as much as about literature. And some say the difficulty of picking a single book suggests that New Yorkers may not be receptive to literary direction.’ NY Times