My American states challenge - post 2

I had an excellent response to my request for books for my new, open-ended, challenge to read my way around the United States. With all the books I have lined up I could be doing this for a lot longer than two or three years: think ten!!! LOL. Several people thought that such a challenge would also apply very nicely to this country, the UK, and I was delighted to hear that Margaret at BooksPlease has actually decided to try it. Do check out her post, here.

I thought I'd use this post to list a few of the suggestions I've had and to stick up a few photos of the books I own that I think might be suitable to read. I tried to take one of all of them on the shelf first:



Not all that successful but it gives an idea of how many I already own - almost forty - that I can make a start on. Add to that around a dozen sundry titles downloaded to my Kindle and I'm starting with fifty it seems.

Anyway, photographing them in two piles seemed to be the way to go so this the non-fiction:



Quite a mixed bag there: Dickens, Mark Twain, Steinbeck, travel narratives, maps, essays and so on. Most of these are multi-stated but a few are specific such as This House of Sky by Ivan Doig (Montana) and True North by George Erickson which I think is mainly Alaska but may include some of the Yukon in Canada as well. Audubon might seem like an odd choice but this gorgeous little book is full of his paintings of North American birds with little accompanying essays and poems. Just beautiful.

Next up, the fiction. How many of these will turn out to be suitable, I don't know. The thing is, I want to read fiction that actually tells me something about the state it's set in, that furthers my knowledge. If it's set somewhere that could be anywhere, then it's no good. So we shall see.



States I have covered here include Arizona, Montana, Texas, New York state, Pennsylvania, California, Wyoming, Georgia, and several are multi-stated again. Authors I have downloaded to my Kindle include, Willa Cather, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edith Wharton, Nevada Barr.

And here is a list of titles that people have come up with:

From a friend in Ohio:

Allan Eckert's series including Tecumseh
My Antonia and O'Pioneers – Willa Cather
Centennial - James Mitchener
Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass
Thoreau's Walden
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Glass Menagerie by Tenneesse Williams
The Little House series – Laura Ingalls Wilder
Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
Harlem - Jonathan Gill
Go Tell It on the Mountain - James Baldwin
The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe
Jack London - The Call of the Wild
Profiles in Courage - John F Kennedy
Winesburg, OH - Sherwood Anderson
Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
Plainsong by Kent Haruf
Cloudsplitter - Russell Banks
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
Dream West by David Nevin
The Things They Carried - Tim O'Brien
Early August - Louis Bromfield
Carl Sandburg - Lincoln the War Years
The Jungle - Upton Sinclair The Jungle
All the President's Men - Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward
My Generation - Tom Brokaw
Once Upon a Town - the Story of the North Platte Canteen - Bob Greene
On the Road - Charles Kurault (or Charles Kurault's America)
Thomas Payne - Common Sense
the US Declaration of Independence and Constitution
The Federalist Papers - Alexander Hamilton
The Help by Kathryn Stockett (Mississippi)
The Alex McKnight books by Steve Hamilton (Michigan)

From Carl (Blogger):

On the Way to Other Country – C.W. Gusewelle (Missouri)

From LizF (Blogger):

The Anna Pigeon series by Nevada Barr (multi-state)

From Yvonne at Fiction Books(Blogger):

The Secret Life of Bees – Sue Monk Kidd (South Carolina?)

From Thomas at My Porch (Blogger):

Mainstreet – Sinclair Lewis (Minnesota)
Echo House – Ward Just (Washington DC)
O Pioneers – Willa Cather (Nebraska)
My Antonia – Willa Cather (Nebraska)
Patron Saint of Liars – Ann Patchett (Kentucky)
Death Comes for the Archbishop – Willa Cather (New Mexico)
Bill Bryson’s non-fiction about the USA

From Lifeonthecutoff (Blogger):

The Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder (Wisconsin, Kansas and more)
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson (Chicago, Ill.)

From Nicola at Vintage Reads (Blogger):

My Antonia by Willa Cather (Nebraska)

From Val at Erasmus Cat and Lifeonthecutoff (Blogger):

Letters of a Woman Homesteader by Elinore Pruitt Stewart

From Pat at Here There and Everywhere (Blogger):

The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America by Bill Bryson

From Carol (Blogger):

The Deborah Knott series by Margaret Maron

From Nan at Letters from a Hill Farm (Blogger):

Murder Casts a Shadow by Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl. (Hawaii)

From Kay at My Random Acts of Reading (Blogger):

The Deborah Knott series by Margaret Maron (North Carolina)
The Kate Shugak series by Dana Stabenow (Alaska)
The Lena Jones series by Betty Webb (Arizona)
The Anna Pigeon books by Nevada Barr (multi-state)
The Alafair Tucker series by Donis Casey (Oklahoma)
The Coffeehouse series by Cleo Coyle (NYC)
The John Creepak series by Chris Grabenstein (New Jersey)
The V.I. Warshawski series by Sara Paretsky (Chicago)
Sandra Dallas for books set in Colorado esp. Tallgrass.
The Joanna Brady series by J.A. Jance (Arizona)

From Margaret at BooksPlease:

Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

From Nulaanne (Blogger) - all Washington State:

Starvation Heights by Gregg Olsen (history)
The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald (biography)
Moon Called by Patrica Briggs (fantasy)
Greywalker by Kat Richardson (fantasy)
The Highest Tide By Jim Lynch (fiction)
Crimson Vengeance by Sheri Lewis Wohl (Vampire fiction)

From Margot at Joyfully Retired:

Falling to Pieces – Vannetta Chapman (Indiana & Amish mystery)

LJ suggestions:

Anything by Louis L’Amour.
Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder
The Moosepath League books by Van Reid (Maine)
Fair and Tender Ladies by Lee Smith (Virginia)
The Country of Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett (Maine)
The Anna Pigeon books by Nevada Barr


Mine:

The Hum and the Shiver – Alex Bledsoe (fantasy, Great Smoky Mountains)
Bill Bryson's autobiography

So there we go. I hope I didn't miss anyone! But an excellent choice of all kinds of books to be going on with. But... I suspect there are many states not spoken for here and even those that are I still welcome more suggestions. So if you have any, please leave them in the comments. And thanks to everyone who has already done so.
~~~oOo~~~