The Big Read at Kansas City Public Library

Last week Kansas City Public Library played host for an amazing event. Over 230 people gathered in the Central Library’s Kirk Hall to listen to one of the Kansas City Star’s favorite journalists discuss one of the Star’s favorite sons.

Senior writer and editor, Steve Paul, addressed an audience of The Big Read participants on the many connections Ernest Hemingway and his classic novel, A Farewell to Arms, have to Kansas City. View the video of the presentation here. Many members of the audience had already finished reading The Big Read selection, A Farewell to Arms and attended local book discussions.

This fall’s The Big Read aims to encourage Kansas Citians to read, enjoy, contemplate, and discuss Hemingway’s landmark novel of love and war on the Italian Front during the First World War. The program period coincides with the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Caporetto, a devastating Italian defeat that served as a climactic moment in A Farewell to Arms.

The National Endowment for the Arts has provided partial funding for Kansas City’s Big Read. Additional resources have been provided by Park University and the National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial.

More than 500 paperback copies of A Farewell to Arms are being distributed to interested readers at all ten Kansas City Public Library locations. Another 200 have been supplied to local businesses and organization interested in having staff participate in Kansas City’s The Big Read. In-house book discussion groups will be held for various staff of Hallmark Cards, Commerce Bank, Missouri Bank & Trust and the Downtown Council. KCPL book group leaders will be on hand to provide facilitation assistance as needed and welcome any opportunity to go into the community and continue discussion of A Farewell to Arms.

If you haven’t picked up a copy of the book, click here. There are still three major events left on The Big Read calendar: A Farewell to Invisibility: Latino Veterans and War; A Farewell to the Academy: Hemingway as Outsider; and the closing event, Hemingway and the Italian Front. Click on any event to save a seat.