Book Announced For 2025 Greenwich Reads Together Program

GREENWICH, CT — Greenwich Library has announced the selection for this year's "Greenwich Reads Together" initiative.

The 2025 selection is "The History of Sound," by author Ben Shattuck.

Shattuck is scheduled to appear at the library’s Berkley Theater on Tuesday, Oct. 28 at 7 p.m. to discuss the book, which is available in print, digital, and audio formats.

Greenwich Reads Together is an annual reading initiative organized by Greenwich Library and supported by the Friends of Greenwich Library.

The community-wide reading experience engages all of Greenwich in exploring a single book. In 2024, thousands of Greenwich residents participated in events around "James" by Percival Everett.

"The History of Sound" is a collection of 12 interconnected short stories set in New England across three centuries, and it examines the unexpected ways the past returns and how love and loss are entwined and transformed over generations.

Shattuck's work "is a love letter to New England, a radiant conversation between past and present, and a moving meditation on the abiding search for home," the library said in an announcement.

The book has received widespread praise, with The Boston Globe describing it as "polyphonic fiction" and calling Shattuck "one of the form’s brightest lights."

The title story of the collection, which follows two men collecting folk songs in Maine during World War I, was adapted into a film starring Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor and premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival.

Shattuck is also the author of "Six Walks: In the Footsteps of Henry David Thoreau," named one of The New Yorker’s Best Books of 2022. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Shattuck is a recipient of the PEN Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers and a Pushcart Prize.

The 2025 Greenwich Reads Together selection was made by a committee of librarians, community members, authors, and volunteers, chaired by Peterson Business Librarian Siobhan Schugmann.

Chosen titles must be of literary quality, reflective of universal issues and capable of generating thought-provoking discussions.

The author event with Shattuck will be livestreamed on the library’s YouTube channel, with a recording made available afterward. Shattuck will be joined in conversation by his editor, Allison Lorentzen. Registration opens in early October.

More information, including reading guides and supplemental materials for young readers, is available at www.greenwichreadstogether.org.