The OneBook CRC Project, which began at CRC in fall 2010, encourages the Cosumnes River College community to read and discuss a common book during each academic year. The project spans both fall and spring semesters and is for the entire campus community (students, administrators, classified staff, faculty and members of the broader Cosumnes River neighborhood). The idea behind the project is to create an intellectual community around the reading of a common book in order to enhance student success, improve cultural competence, and encourage inclusive teaching and learning.
What is a common book, you might ask? A common book is a text that students and staff across the campus read and discuss in various capacities throughout the school year. Through OneBook CRC, students, faculty, staff and community members are encouraged to engage in the practice of reading and to use their reading experience to communicate, learn, grow and connect beyond their classrooms and workspaces.
Interested in hosting a OneBook activity? Contact your PD Coordinator to share your ideas!
2023-2025 Selection
Laziness Does Not Exist
The OneBook selection for fall 2023 through spring 2025 is Laziness Does Not Exist by Dr. Devon Price.
Like many Americans, Dr. Devon Price believed that productivity was the best way to measure self-worth. Price was an overachiever from the start, graduating from both college and graduate school early, but that success came at a cost. After Price experienced severe health problems related to stress and overexertion, he was forced to examine the darker side of all this productivity.
Laziness Does Not Exist explores the psychological underpinnings of the “laziness lie,” including its origins from the Puritans and how it has continued to proliferate as digital work tools have blurred the boundaries between work and life. Using in-depth research, Price explains that people today do far more work than nearly any other humans in history yet most of us often still feel we are not doing enough.
Filled with practical and accessible advice for overcoming society’s pressure to do more, and featuring interviews with researchers, consultants, and experiences from real people drowning in too much work, Laziness Does Not Exist “is the book we all need right now” (Caroline Dooner, author of The F*ck It Diet).
- Adapted from publisher marketing
If you would like to learn more about the book and what inspired Dr. Price to write it, check out this NPR interview.
Our OneBook, Laziness Does Not Exist by Dr. Devon Price, is now available for checkout! You can also request a copy to be held for you in our pickup lockers, or read it online.
We have a LibGuide for the book as well, including ideas for research topics, and related interviews and articles.
Visit the library and grab a copy!
Join the Laziness Does Not Exist Canvas page
If you are interested in participating in programming for OneBook, please contact Andrea Dean at deana@crc.losrios.edu.
OneBook Guidelines for Employees
- At the first spring semester meeting of the Professional Development Committee the OneBook Workgroup for the following academic year shall be identified.
- OneBook Workgroup Membership: The workgroup shall consist of 3 or 5 members. Membership shall include the Faculty Chair of Professional Development, committee members in good standing, and a librarian (if available).
- A campus-wide “Call for OneBook Recommendations” shall be sent out, via email, before the end of March.
- Upon close of the campus-wide “Call for OneBook Recommendations,” the OneBook Workgroup shall review all recommendations, and select 2-5 options, based upon the following criteria:
- Cross-disciplinary appeal
- Social significance related to current events
- Quality of text, accessibility of prose, and literary appeal, to students, staff, and faculty
- Complementary nature, and collaborative opportunity, with corresponding spring semester cultural, and other, campus-wide events (e.g. Teaching Circles, Black History Month, Women’s History Month, Earth Week, and other events identified as “ongoing campus events”)
- Potential of integration OneBook programming with current campus funding streams (i.e. possible links between book author honorarium and categorical funding opportunities related to the corresponding academic school year)
- If the OneBook Workgroup does not reach consensus, a vote by the PD Committee shall determine the OneBook selection in question
- Once the OneBook Workgroup identifies 2-5 options, report is made to the Professional Development Committee and a subsequent OneBook: Vote! is sent out campus-wide
- OneBook selection, and related campus-wide announcement, should occur no later than May 1
A7. Campus and Community Engagement
Provide a variety of engagement opportunities on campus, online and in the community.
Students engaged in campus activities are better informed and more likely to use services that contribute to their success. A vibrant campus life encourages participation and provides opportunities for students to apply the critical thinking skills developed in the classroom to real world discussions with their peers, staff, faculty and community members.
Area 4
Students will make progress toward becoming engaged and self-reliant learners demonstrating habits of intellectual inquiry and striving toward their maximum potential.
a. Actively engage in intellectual inquiry beyond that required in order to pass classes.
f. Be actively involved in campus life and express a sense of engagement with the campus culture.
Area 5
Students will become more prepared to contribute to a diverse democratic society with a pluralistic perspective of the world.
c. Develop a foundation for cultural pluralism, a rejection of previous personal prejudices and knowledge of and comfort with others unlike themselves.
d. Recognize the ethical dimensions of decisions and actions as well as demonstrate the ability to engage in the ethical reasoning necessary to exercise responsibility as an ethical individual, professional, local, and global citizen.
Inspiration for the OneBook CRC Project
The original inspiration for the OneBook Project was a research report from the National Endowment for the Arts entitled, "To Read or Not To Read: A Question of National Consequence" (PDF). After reading this report, Humanities Professor Maureen Moore was inspired to create a common book project at CRC. Projects similar to OneBook CRC are cropping up at campuses around the country as other colleges work to encourage reading and foster a sense of campus community.