Three years after its launch, New York City’s the Big Read (itself a spawn of “What If All of Seattle Read the Same Book,” launched 10 years ago) has spawned smaller, community-based undertakings, with thousands of readers enjoying everything from literary classics like The Grapes of Wrath to modern bestsellers like The Joy Luck Club to slightly less widely read (but still well-known) gems like Cynthia Ozick’s The Shawl, which was “inspired by the real-life murder of a Jewish baby in a Nazi concentration camp,” according to its author in The New York Times.

Canada has similar programs, such as One Book, One Community, but anything, anywhere, that gets a dozen (or more) people reading “ and to enjoy what they’re reading “ is a good thing.