The goal of the Gulf Coast Reads program  encourages readers throughout the Gulf Coast to discuss a particular book with their neighbors, co-workers, friends and families during October each year.  

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2019  Gulf  Coast Reads -- the Librarybook   by Susan Orlean

"On the morning of April 29, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. As the moments passed, the patrons and staff who had been cleared out of the building realized this was not the usual fire alarm. As one fireman recounted, “Once that first stack got going, it was ‘Goodbye, Charlie.’” The fire was disastrous: it reached 2000 degrees and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed four hundred thousand books and damaged seven hundred thousand more. Investigators descended on the scene, but more than thirty years later, the mystery remains: Did someone purposefully set fire to the library—and if so, who?
"Weaving her lifelong love of books and reading into an investigation of the fire, award-winning New Yorker   reporter and New York Times   bestselling author Susan Orlean delivers a mesmerizing and uniquely compelling book that manages to tell the broader story of libraries and librarians in a way that has never been done before."
http://www.gulfcoastreads.org
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Past years' Gulf Coast Reads selections include:
2012     Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close   by Jonathan Safran Foer
2013      The Dog Stars   by Peter Heller
2014      Remember Ben Clayton   by Stephen Harrigan
2015      The Promise​ by Ann Weisgarber
2016       The Train  to Crystal City  by  Jan Jarboe Russell
2017        News of the World   by Paulette Jiles
2018       Bluebird, Bluebird by   Attica Locke