Announcing the Campus Read for 2011-12

The 2011-2012 Campus Read selection is:

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

About the BSC Campus Read

In the fall of 2004, BSC established its first Campus Read, a project in which all faculty, staff, and students read and discuss the same book. We believe that the Campus Read builds community, gives everyone a common talking point, demonstrates the power and importance of reading, builds a culture of reading at BSC, promotes lifelong learning, and supports BSC’s philosophy of putting learning first.

We've had quite a history of good reading at BSC:

• 2004-05 - Montana 1948 by BSC alum Larry Watson. This novel deals with family relationships, racism, coming of age, crime, punishment, and justice.


• 2005-06 - Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom, a book that explores age, aging, death, dying and one man's struggle with ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease).


• 2006-07 - Nickel and Dimed : On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich. The author of this book goes undercover to explore if it is possible to survive in America on minimum wage.


• 2007-08 - Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, a compelling non-fiction account of a young man who renounces wealth to match wits with the Alaskan bush.


• 2008-09 - The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie, which won the 2007 National Book Award Winner for Young People's Literature. In the voice of a 14-year-old boy living on the Rez, the author shares a semi-autobiographical look at life caught between the Indian and white worlds.


• 2009-10 - The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, a memoir of a girl growing up in revolutionary Iran. This graphic novel was made into a 2007 film that was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.


• 2010-11 - Outcasts United: an American Town, a Refugee Team, and One Woman's Quest to Make a Difference by Warren St. John. Outcasts United is the story of a group of teenage refugees from war-torn countries who have been relocated to Clarkston, Georgia, and are involved with a soccer team under the direction of Luma Mufleh.

What Should We Read Next?

The Campus Read Committee has narrowed the 2011 Campus Read selections down to two:

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

The Maltese Falcon is a 1930 "hard-boiled" detective novel featuring Sam Spade, a private eye in San Francisco. Spade and his partner have been hired by "Miss Wonderly" to follow a man who allegedly ran off with her sister. From there, the plot thickens and it's a game of intrigue and lies and money and trying to figure out who is really telling the truth. The story has been adapted for the cinema several times, but chances are you're most familiar with the film starring Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade, Mary Astor as Brigid O'Shaughnessy, and Peter Lorre as Joel Cairo.


Mudbound by Hillary Jordan

Mudbound is Hillary Jordan's debut novel. Set on a cotton farm in the Mississippi Delta in the late 1940s, it depicts a world of racism, prejudice, poverty, and hardship through the eyes of six characters, who take turns narrating the story. It won the Bellwether Prize for Fiction in 2006. Barbara Kingsolver, the founder of the prize, said this of Hillary Jordan's book, "Her characters walked straight out of 1940s Mississippi and into the part of my brain where sympathy and anger and love reside, leaving my heart racing. They are with me still."

What should we read next? We welcome your comments!

No One Knows about Persian Cats - Film Coming to Bismarck!

The 2009-10 Campus Read was Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi.

In April 2010, the Campus Read Committee invited Roxana Saberi to our campus. Saberi grew up in Fargo, is an Iranian-American journalist and former Miss North Dakota, and was held as a political prisoner in Tehran, Iran, for several months. She is also the author of a memoir, Between Two Worlds: My Life and Capitivity in Iran, and co-wrote the screenplay for an award-winning Iranian film, No One Knows about Persian Cats.

You have a chance to see this film! The Cinema 100 Film Society will be showing it at the Grand Theatres on Thursday, February 10, at 3 p.m. and 5:30 p.m.

Check out the trailer on Cinema 100's Facebook page.