A resolution to read:  Tolerance in the Big Read

by Dorothy J. Best
RATON — I know, I know, I know – the last thing you want to read this week is a column on New Year’s Resolutions.  Is this modern form of facing the replacement of last year’s calendar still valid?  Must we spend the first two weeks of 2016 attempting to lose weight and get more exercise while learning to play the bassoon?  Full disclosure here, I spent my pajama clad weekend television binging on recorded Christmas show specials that felt too syrupy to watch before the grand holiday.   I will be the last person to judge anyone who does not stick to those pesky resolutions.
Now that post-holiday reality is almost here, I find myself preparing for a large project that requires writing a grant.  “What have I gotten myself into?” I sigh.  It’s called The Big Read, a program structured by the National Endowment for the Arts, and it’s about reading, books, good books, as a community.  Yet with my Nook in one hand and my iPad in the other, my cursory review of the reading list leaves me somber.  Don’t get me wrong, the books are great!   Some classics, some contemporary, excellent writers, and thought-provoking subjects. 
What gives me pause?  The theme of many of these books is tolerance.  Normally, there’s a scattering of ten or so Christmas cards for our home.  This year, there were only two, those annual letters about what life has offered the families of the senders in the last year.  Each concluded their missives with a hope that the world will be more peaceful in 2016.  I will not launch into my own rant about what we might all do to make peace a possibility, although I will say that tolerance is a start.
Consider reading a book as your New Year’s Resolution.  There are thirty-four titles on The Big Read book list, here are a few that speak of tolerance:  ‘In the Time of Butterflies,’ by Julia Alvarez; ‘A Lesson Before Dying,’ by Ernest J. Gaines; ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ by Harper Lee; ‘When the Emperor was Divine,’ by Julie Otsuka; and, ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,’ by Mark Twain.  Not all scary, are they?  Some of these messages of tolerance are subtle and still entertaining.
Full disclosure again, I have not read all of these books; a few I have not read in decades.  The Big Read only requires one to be read by an entire community.  I challenge myself, call it a resolution if you want, to read something different this year and reread some books long since cobwebbed in my memory.  To binge read and remember what tolerance looks like in the hands of master storytellers.