According to a City press release, “Santa Monica Citywide Reads, a community reading program that invites everyone in Santa Monica to read and discuss the same novel in book clubs and other related events held throughout the city,” began April 18 and will run through May 19.

In its fifth year, the program is spotlighting a novel by a woman for
the first time, The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.

The Time Traveler’s Wife is described in the press release as “the fantastic, romantic adventure story of beautiful artist Clare Abshire and dashing librarian Henry De Tamble..who must fight against one tremendous obstacle. Henry suffers from ‘chrono-displacement disorder,’ a condition that causes him to unexpectedly jump backwards and forwards in time, while Clare ages in the normal chronological fashion, completely unaware as to where and when she and Henry will be able to resume their lives together.

“ ‘Audrey Niffenegger makes this premise work with delightful wryness and delicate poignance,’ says Susan Sterr-Ryan, chair of the English department at Santa Monica College and a member of the Citywide Reads Advisory Committee. ‘As we come to love her richly drawn characters, we appreciate our own challenges to live in the moment.’

“Audrey Niffenegger is a professor in the M.F.A. program at the Columbia College Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts. The Time Traveler’s Wife, her first novel, was a New York Times best-seller and win several awards, including a British Book Award for Popular Fiction and the Young Adult Library Services Association’s Alex Award for books with appeal to teens.”

Niffenegger has subsequently published two “visual novels,” The Three Incestuous Sisters and The Adventuress, and is currently at work on a new novel about a pair of mirror-image twins.

Sponsored by the Santa Monica Public Library, with support from the Friends of the Library, Santa Monica College Associates, California Center for the Book, and community, educational and business partners,

Book clubs can take part by using a Citywide Reads Resource Guide, available at all Santa Monica Public Library locations and on the Citywide Reads website at www.smpl.org/cwr

For a list of Citywide Reads book discussions and special events, call the Santa Monica Public Library at (310) 458-8600 or visit www.smpl.org/cwr.