The 2012 Big Read: Quincy will feature the book, "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien. The month-long initiative will kick-off the 2012 Big Read with a gathering at the Illinois Veterans Home, 1707 North 12th Street, Quincy, IL.

Judge Robert Cook, retired, will present the keynote address with an introductory speech from Mayor John Spring. The Quincy Notre Dame band will play patriotic songs while participants enjoy hot dogs at the park. Tours of the All Wars Museum, located on the grounds of the Illinois Veterans Home, will also be given. Finally, nine hundred copies of the book will be distributed to those in attendance. The Big Read is designed to get members of the community to read the same book at the same time. Hopefully, this will spark reading and discussion as a whole in the community. The Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts designed to revitalize the role of literary reading in American popular culture. Reading at Rist: A Survey of Literary Reading in America, a 2004 NEA report, identified a critical decline in reading for pleasure among American adults. The Big Read addresses this issue by bringing communities together to read, discuss, and celebrate books and writers from American and world literature.