Multnomah County Library announces 'Everybody Reads' book for 2023

(DECEMBER 9, 2022) Every year, Multnomah County Library invites everyone to read the same book. In fact, the program is called "Everybody Reads." In 2023, the book is A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki.

The book tells the story of two strangers. One is in Canada. The other is in Japan. One lives in the present. The other is from the past. Their two lives soon connect. Ruth is a writer on an island in British Columbia. She finds a Hello Kitty lunchbox on the beach. She discovers inside the diary of 16-year-old Nao Yasutani of Tokyo. Nao is the target of her classmates’ bullying. She struggles with loneliness. She thinks about suicide. But she doesn’t want to leave the world until she writes the story of her great-grandmother, a Buddhist nun over a century old.

The library wants to encourage discussion in the community. So it shares many copies of this one book and asks everybody to read it. The experience gives people something to share and talk about. People can check out the book from the Multnomah County Library. On March 16, 2023, the author will visit Portland to talk about her work.