The Clinton County Reads Steering Committee has announced the results of voting and the county’s choice for Clinton County Reads 2019: “Educated,” by Tara Westover.
It’s a memoir about a girl who was kept out of school by her survivalist family in the mountains of Idaho, first setting foot in a classroom when she was 17 and going on to earn a doctorate in 2014 from Cambridge University.
“Educated” was named one of the best books of 2018 by the New York Times Book Review, Time magazine, the Washington Post, NPR, Newsday, “Good Morning America,” the New York Post, and multiple other news organizations.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates called the book “an amazing story, and truly inspiring. The kind of book everyone will enjoy. It’s even better than you’ve heard.”
Clinton County Reads’ month-long, county-wide reading program starts in early March and culminates with an April 11 dinner at the General Denver Hotel in Wilmington.
Author Tara Westover spent her days working in her father’s junkyard or distilling herbs for her mother, a self-taught herbalist and midwife. After her first (though late) taste of education, she pursued learning for a decade.
She graduated magna cum laude from Brigham Young University in 2008 and was subsequently awarded a Gates Cambridge Scholarship, eventually obtaining her PhD from Cambridge.
A review from USA Today, which awarded the book four out of four stars, says: “Tara Westover is living proof that some people are flat-out, boots-always-laced-up indomitable. … ‘Educated’ is a heartbreaking, heartwarming, best-in-years memoir about striding beyond the limitations of birth and environment into a better life.”
The Clinton County Reads steering committee selects titles for the annual ballot based on literary merit and themes that lend themselves to programming and conversation throughout Clinton County. The committee times the announcement to allow ample opportunity to read the selection prior to the Clinton County Reads events in the spring.
Past Clinton County Reads choices are:
2018: “A Mother’s Reckoning,” by Sue Klebold
2017: “Girl Waits With Gun,” by Amy Stewart
2016: “Everything I Never Told You,” by Celeste Ng
2015: “Unbroken,” by Laura Hillenbrand
2014: “A Walk in the Woods,” by Bill Bryson
2013: “Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter,” by Tom Franklin
2012: “The Book Thief,” by Markus Zusak
2011: “Huckleberry Finn,” by Mark Twain
2010: “The Kindness of Strangers,” by Katrina Kittle
2009: “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life,” by Barbara Kingsolver
2008: “Mountains Beyond Mountains,” by Tracy Kidder
2007: “March,” by Geraldine Brooks
2006: “To Kill a Mockingbird,” by Harper Lee
Clinton County Reads is sponsored by the Blanchester Public Library, Sabina Public Library and its New Vienna branch, Wilmington Public Library and its Clinton-Massie branch, and BooksNMore.org. Copies of “Educated” are available at each library location.
Serving on the Clinton County Reads 2019 steering committee consists of chairman Chris Owens, Joy Brubaker, Peggy Dunn, Eileen Brady, Joe Knueven, Bonnie Starcher, Marla Stewart, and Mary Thomas Watts.
