Read Around the USA
One of the most fun things I’ve done for my reading life this year has been participating in The Book Girl’s Guide annual reading challenge, and this year it’s been a Read Around America challenge. They broke the country into different regions—one to focus on each month and offered up a list of books set in those particular states. Their challenge was for readers to select one book for each region, but once I started looking at titles I realized I couldn’t pick just one, I wanted to pick one per state (which was still hard to narrow down sometimes!) Below is a list of the books I’ve read thus far, I’ll update it throughout the year as I keep reading.
When you read five books in a row all set in one geographical region, you can’t help but notice the setting, it starts to leap off the page and you begin to see similarities in things authors mention or things that become a part of a character’s life. For instance, when you read 5 books in a row set in the southwest desert (Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona) you recognize immediately that water becomes a key part of every single story—the search for it, the importance of conserving it, treating/filtering it when out in nature and so forth. By the third of these books I could almost feel the hot, dry wind, see the baren landscape and feel the refreshment when rain finally came. It was a part of every single novel in this set of five in some way, shape, or form. This happened over and over—in the 5 books set in upper New England, the oceans/lobster boats, the cold Atlantic waters and tides played a part in every story. You could tell the sea plays a huge part of life in these far northern Atlantic states in the same way that every state set in the far southeast mentioned the humidity that falls upon the region every summer. It was such a fun way to read, and fun to notice and experience things that shape the lives of people (fictional though they may be) in each region of our beautiful nation.
Clicking on each link below will take you to my Goodreads Reviews that I wrote for each book sharing my thoughts on that title.
