Chair – Dave F.
To become a volunteer or to find out more about Literature Committee, contact literature@nm-aa.org.
Literature Committee News – August 2020
Greetings Area 46,
It appears that we have an area assembly coming up soon, so this seems like a great time to talk about the Literature Committee. I am guessing a lot of people think of the Literature committee as people hawking books, while that is true in one sense there is so much more. I was Literature chair for District 3 many moons ago and basically there was not a lot for me to do as Central Office was so close. One thing I would like to ask is if anybody is aware that in New York GSO has been studying the possibility of publishing a version of the Big Book in what is known as Plain Language. While this would be more of a supplement to the big book, it still raises a lot of questions about it, Supposedly the first 164 pages were to be never touched. This type of book may help a lot of people feel a lot more comfortable as they can relate to the writing so much easier that the style of writing they used in 1935. This topic has been brought up for consideration a few times, if it gains more support it may just come to be approved. I was not aware of this until the pre-conference papers were distributed for discussion.
Here is a small sample of what How It Works would read like in Plain Language.
It’s rare for someone to fail if they follow this path. Those who don’t get better either can’t or won’t commit to this simple program. They truly don’t have the ability to be honest with themselves. We know such people exist. It’s not their fault. Perhaps they were born this way. As a result, they just can’t grasp the idea of living a life of total honesty…
This is just one of the things that make the committee work a lot more interesting, while selling books does go a long way to helping AA as a whole, it is absolutely not the only thing we do. That is why I would again like to ask all the DCMs in the area to appoint a literature representative for your district. I will be passing along everything I get from GSO and you can have some great discussions in your district meetings. I have learned that talking about various topics like the possibility of a Plain Language Big Book really builds a different sense of ownership of our programs, we are actually taking part in deciding the future of AA and this in itself builds bonds on a new level within our homegroups and our districts.
And by the way, AA World Services has put the Big Book on sale. All formats and all languages are now 10% off until September 30th of this year.
Yours in Service,
Dave F.
For those of you who are not aware the new book titled Our Great Responsibility from World Services is now available. It is a wonderful history book comprising mainly of Bill W.’s General Service Conference Talks. There are also a lot of historical photos and hand written notes.
