2013 Summer Reading Book Selected

The Summer Reading Program Committee is pleased to announce the title selected for the fall of 2013:  Finding the Game by Gwendolyn Oxenham, and its companion video, Pelada.  The film documents Oxenham’s travels around the world to find pick-up soccer games and players passionate about the sport.  The book expands upon the many cultural encounters – in a Bolivian prison and in a poor African neighborhood, for example – that the game inspired.

At the age of 16, Oxenham joined the women’s soccer team at Duke University.  She spent four years developing her game and preparing to play professionally.   The professional league folded just as she was graduating, so she reconsidered her goals and earned a degree in creative writing.  The book is a memoir focused on her dreams, her disappointments, her adjustments and her achievements.  The film, funded by Duke’s Center for Documentary Studies, demonstrates Oxenham’s drive to create, to compete, and to celebrate the ways that people can connect via their passions.

We hope you will read the book with us and participate in the related activities!