Let Salt Lake read together

Any orchestrated effort to get people reading is commendable in our book. It's laudable, certainly, that Salt Lake City is sponsoring its "Salt Lake Reads Together" initiative.

The intent of book clubs and related initiatives is to get people reading great books and to stimulate thoughtful community discussion. As Oprah Winfrey says of her reinstated book club, "My mission is to make this the biggest book club in the world and get people reading again. Not just reading, but reading great books."

Oprah has scored big on both counts. Her book club reportedly includes some 300,000 people. Her latest reading list includes Leo Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina," John Steinbeck's "East of Eden," "One Hundred Years of Solitude," by Gabriel Garcia Marquez; "Cry, The Beloved Country" by Alan Paton and "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" by Carson McCullers. There's not a bad read in the bunch. While some of the books touch on controversial themes and subject matter, they lend themselves to inclusive discussions of those issues.

"The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" is part of the suggested reading list for Salt Lake City's new book club. The profanity- and blasphemy-laced book by English author Mark Haddon is the story of an autistic Sherlock Holmes wannabe who uncovers the truth about a slain dog. The popular book is replete with four-letter words, including the f-bomb and profane references to deity.

Although the city is sponsoring the book club, it has made no mandate that Salt Lake City residents read the book. But it's on the suggested reading list and a curious choice considering that community-building is one of the goals of the "Salt Lake Reads Together" initiative. It's a tone-deaf selection considering that a large portion of the community would be highly offended by the overuse of language many would consider profane and blasphemous.

Although some at City Hall consider discussing the selection of the book for the city-sponsored book club as a step toward censorship, the issue at hand isn't whether the book should be removed from city library collections or, as some self-appointed zealot in Davis County has done, marking out offensive words and passages with a permanent marker.

It's about making better choices that will contribute to community discussion, not carve out segments of the population that are offended by profanity, such as devout Mormons (who comprise 45 percent of Salt Lake City residents), Muslims, Baptists, Catholics and others whose objections to coarse language are not based in religion.

We applaud Councilman Eric Jergensen for raising questions about the book's selection for an initiative intended to build community. The selection of a profanity-laced book for a book club in this community provides little opportunity for a truly inclusive discussion, which, after all, was one of the club's stated goals.