RidgewayGirl's Road Trip

I couldn't resist piggybacking onto this forum when I heard the discussion over on the 999 Challenge on LindaPanzo's thread.

Let me browse around and see what there is on my shelves that will fit, although experience proves that this will be another good reason to acquire more books.



create your own personalized map of the USA

Yay!

And just browsing my library, I've found four books set in Florida (the first State I checked my tags for--and my books are not all exhaustively tagged...yet). The problem will not be finding suitable titles, but restricting myself to one for each State.

I'm not restricting myself, RidgewayGirl. Unless it gets too cumbersome, I intend to list all the books I read for each state rather than choose only one.

Alabama
Fiction: Scottsboro by Ellen Feldman
Alaska
Non-Fiction: Forever on the Mountain by James M. Tabor
Arizona
Fiction: Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli
Non-Fiction: And Die in the West by Paula Marks
Arkansas
California
Non-Fiction: Obscene in the Extreme by Rick Wartzman
Fiction: Dead Boys by Richard Lange
Colorado
Connecticut
Non-Fiction: The Devil's Rooming House by M. William Phelps
Delaware

Florida
Fiction: As Hot as it Was You Ought to Thank Me by Nanci Kincaid
Georgia
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois
Non-Fiction: The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
Fiction: Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
Indiana
Fiction: Salvation City by Sigrid Nunez
Iowa
Kansas
Non-Fiction: In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Fiction: Dark Places by Gillian Flynn
The Center of Everything by Laura Moriarty
The Scent of Rain and Lightning by Nancy Pickard

Kentucky
Louisiana
Fiction: Testing Kate by Whitney Gaskell
Maine
Fiction: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
Maryland
Fiction: Baltimore Blues by Laura Lippman
Massachusetts
Fiction: Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane
Michigan
Fiction: Starvation Lake by Bryan Gruley
Minnesota
Fiction: Shadow Tag by Louise Erdrich
Mississippi
Fiction: The Help by Kathryn Stockett
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin

Missouri
Fiction: Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
Montana
Non-Fiction: Bad Land: An American Romance by Jonathan Raban
Nebraska
Fiction: The Cleanup by Sean Doolittle
Nevada
Fiction: Stray Dogs by John Ridley
New Hampshire
Fiction: No Door, No Windows by Joe Schreiber
New Jersey
Fiction: Sloppy Firsts by Megan McCafferty
A Fair Maiden by Joyce Carol Oates
New Mexico
New York
Fiction: Field of Darkness by Cornelia Read (Syracuse)
Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem (Brooklyn, NYC)
Non-Fiction: Dissecting Death by frederickzugibe::Frederick Zugibe

North Carolina
Fiction: Serena by Ron Rash
North Dakota
Ohio
Fiction: The Last Bridge by Teri Coyne
Oklahoma
Oregon
Fiction: Evil at Heart by Chelsea Cain
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
Fiction: Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison

South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Non-Fiction: Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer
Dogtown by Stefan Bechtel
Fiction: The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff
Vermont
Virginia
Non-Fiction: Martin's Hundred by Ivor Noel Hume
Washington
Fiction: Indian Killer by Sherman Alexie
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming

Florida: Fiction--As Hot as It Was You Ought to Thank Me by Nanci Kincaid

Nanci Kincaid has created a small, southern town set in the 1950's that is so wonderfully vivid that one inhabits the space with Berry, her dissolving family and colorful neighbors. From the death tests her brothers devise for the numerous snakes (snakes resonate throughout the setting and the novel) to the relentless humid heat to the hurricane and its damp aftermath this book describes central Florida in a way more real than the Disneyworld dominated tourist destination of today.

Read As Hot as it Was You Ought to Thank Me for the descriptions of the relationships, the poor white trash family outside of town, the rival churches, the chain gang come to rebuild after the hurricane, the bone-crushing poverty. Read it for the memorable descriptions of starting the car after the hurricane and the celebratory bonfire. Read it.

It's funny, but since I joined this challenge, I have not run into a single book set in the US, and most don't even have American authors. You'd think this would be a piece of cake, but I think the American books have all fled my house. I am reading a very nice book set in Spain, but not sure that I can count this as my Alaska book, despite the author living there. Do Alaskans drink a lot of sangria?

I am now reading three books. One is set in Spain, one in Sweden and the last in Bethlehem in the West Bank. It's like I'm avoiding the United States at all costs! Glad this is an open ended challenge as I may need to read my way around the world first.

RG, I've noticed that, too. Before I started reading the challenge, it seemed like everything I read was set in the U.S.

Now, it's all either nonfiction or else fiction set overseas. At the rate I'm going, I will be the last one to finish.

I really am aiming for books with a strong sense of place and not just ones that happen to be set somewhere.

Hmmm, in thirty years, we may be the only founding members of this forum left!

I'll be there with you. At first I thought I might alternate locations, one US book, one in another country, but then decided I didn't want to make work out of this or feel obligated to read a certain thing at a certain time. I do look forward to working in some of those "meant to" books as time goes along but I'm going to continue to read as the spirit moves me recording as I can.

But I do think that this will make me more aware of books with American settings--especially with strong settings. I want to read the newest Denis Lehane, The Given Day, since I think it is set in Boston.

At the rate I'm going, I should finish just in time for my retirement party!!

You're right--this does make me more aware of the settings of books, which is a good thing.

I was so pleased when I began Dark Places, Gillian Flynn's newest novel. She writes well and Dark Places has a fabulous protagonist, a troubled, depressed, street-smart kleptomaniac, who as a seven-year-old, was in the house as her mother and two sisters were murdered, apparently by her older brother. She's spent her life since then not thinking about that day, but now the money donated to care for her has run out and her only source potential income is a motley collection of crime buffs interested in the notorious Kansas Farmhouse Satan Sacrifice case. And so Libby begins to confront her memories of her family and to talk to people involved in the events of twenty-five years earlier.

Oh, this is a good, nail-biting read. Libby is a damaged, difficult woman, but I was drawn into her life and quite liked her (on paper--I wouldn't want her in my home!). The events of the day in question are doled out in chapters that alternate with the Libby's present-day efforts, showing that everyone lies and building up to the dramatic ending. And that was the problem. The conclusion felt wrong and overly elaborate. The final twenty pages didn't completely wreck my enjoyment of the first 320, but they did temper my enthusiasm for this book.

The book is set in Kansas City, Missouri, as well as in a small town in Kansas. I'm counting it as my Kansas book as it gave a real feel for the flatness and farmlands and roads of Kansas. My picks for SC (my State!) and Utah are equally unflattering, so I'm not picking on Kansas!

"No." I folded in on myself, ignoring my meal, projecting glumness. That was another of my mom's words: glum. It meant having the blues in a way that annoyed other people. Having the blues aggressively.

After another forty minutes of driving, the strip clubs started showing up: dismal, crouched blocks of cement, most without any real name, just neon signs shouting Live Girls! Live Girls! Which I guess is a better selling point than Dead Girls...There's something disturbing about not even bothering with a name. Whenever I see news stories about children who were killed by their parents, I think:But how could it be? They cared enough to give this kid a name, they had a moment-at least one moment-when they shifted through all the possibilities and picked one specific name for their child, decided what they would call their baby. How could you kill something you cared enough to name?

An elementary school librarian suggested Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli to me. It's set in one of the exburbs of the Phoenix Metropolitan area and is full of the feel of tract homes (what was called taco deco when I lived there), shopping malls and desert. It's a novel about non-conformity and how much we need to belong to the group, especially in high school, although it's sadly still true in adulthood. And how threatened we are by someone who refuses to go along, how upset we get when our comfortable lives are interrupted by something outside of what is accepted.

Whoot! Two books set in the USA in one month!

RG and lindapanzo, the same thing's happened to me - I feel like I read tons of US fiction and non-fiction but it's dried up since July!

Amazing how many books are not set in the US. I have also set myself the personal goal of making the books I include have a real sense of place. There are plenty of books that are set somewhere specific, but when you read them, they are just set in some generic big city or small town with a few street names or landmarks thrown in. So this will take awhile. I did go through my (embarrassingly large) TBR pile and make a stack of books that might fit the bill, so I'll try to fit a few more from that pile into my reading in the near future.

I'm counting books only with a strong sense of place. I just read the first Myron Bolitar mystery by Harlan Coben but couldn't even tell you where it was located, though I do remember a mention of some highway being what people think of as NJ.

I love the idea of doing a non-fiction and a fiction book for each state- I'm going to borrow (errrr...steal) that idea, if you don't mind.

And I'm glad to see your review of Dark Places- I really need to get that one read.

Borrow away...I got the idea from the forum's title.

I finally read a book set in the United States and I already have a book for California. Oh well, it wasn't that good, in any case.

lahochstetler/24 and RidgewayGirl/25, that was my thought, too, though its going to make a long trip. I've been mixing up the fiction and non-fiction as I travel.

Hey, RidgewayGirl, I happened upon one of your reviews and liked it so well, that I've just spent the better part of my lunch hour surfing through your review page, thumbing-up my favorite reviews along the way.

If I recall, they were, As Hot as It Was You Ought to Thank Me, The 19th Wife, Sarah's Key, Whiskey Rebels, and Echoes From the Dead. I'm looking at Hot for my Florida read.

Thank you, countrylife. You just made my afternoon.

I dove cheerfully into Brooklyn by Colm Toibin today, thinking about how perfectly it would fit here and in my 999 Challenge, and how organized I was, etc...only to see that I have already read my New York book. In fact, I have already read two of 'em. Has anyone else noticed that half of all books set in the US of A are set in either NY or CA?

I did find a dark mystery novel set in Omaha, so maybe that'll be next. At least Nebraska isn't teaming with authors.

#29 I've been to Omaha, it's a perfectly lovely city. I'm anxious to hear about this dark mystery set there - be sure to let us know how it is.

So I just read Evil at Heart by Chelsea Cain all in one big rush. There's no redeeming value in her series about a serial killer who's a media sensation and a cult heroine. I was thinking that it wasn't particularly fair to the State of Oregon to use this book as my fiction choice, but a quick look at the books already listed shows that Evil at Heart fits right it. My challenge is turning into RidgewayGirl Peers at the Dark Underbelly of America.

I hope you find sunshine in your next read! :-)

@31 I'm actually scanning my shelves tonight trying to find something a little cheerier for my Europe Endless challenge after three really dark stories. So I know the feeling. (Then again, dark underbellies are more fun)

I've picked up Stray Dogs and think it may be my next read for this challenge. With that comes an alteration. I think to be fair, I should find books that portray each state as pits of despair dotted with criminals. I'll leave my choice for Florida because there was enough despair and plenty of snakes to replace any missing serial killers and possibly my New Jersey choice, since the protagonist's view of her home state was somewhat unflattering.

Strangely, this makes me much more excited about the challenge.

uh oh. I can see the tentacles spreading on your monster! Let's see, now I have an urge to do a historical fiction, a non-fiction, and a romance for each state...

@34, I picked a Crime, Mystery, Thriller topic for my Fifty States and European challenges so I could differentiate them from my Reading Globally challenge. I wish you well if that's the way you want to go, though there should be plenty of options to choose from for most of the states.

It does make it more fun for me to add something that makes it different and less flexible. For another challenge, the alphabet challenge, I've restricted myself to one word titles.

The protagonist of Stray Dogs has a knack for making bad life decisions, ones that lead to often having to leave town in a hurry. He's a gambling addict, so he eventually ended up in Las Vegas, settling down with a girlfriend, occasionally paying part of the rent, until an illegal poker game goes bad and he finds himself on the run once again. His car breaks down in the small, dying desert town of Sierra, which is where his luck turns even worse.

Stewart is not a man you would want to have anywhere near you or anyone you love. You probably wouldn't want him near your enemies. He's almost completely amoral, entirely self-absorbed and his language would make a gang member blush. He's also a lot of fun within the pages of a book. His luck is terrible. If a convenience store is being robbed, he'll be inside buying twinkies. If someone has a really bad idea, they'll invite him to participate. Which he will.

The writing is a bit sparse on characterization and nuance, but with so much going on, one barely notices that the characters are almost cartoons.

The truth. This is what telling the truth got him. Truth brings only pain, and heartache, and difficulty. If you care about someone, if you love them, and if you want to spare yourself a little suffering at the same time, then truth has got no place in a relationship and should only be used when a good lie doesn't come quick enough.

I have a great weakness for books written by forensics professionals. And there are a lot of them. It's as though every medical examiner or forensic anthropologist reaches retirement age and thinks "hey, folks sure do like that CSI show. I bet they'd like to hear from me." And then they hire a ghost writer and get to work. Some aren't bad, although every good book of this genre that I've read came out before John Douglas's Mindhunter book. They were written by people with something to say, with little expectation of the big paycheck. I recommend Dead Men Do Tell Tales or Bone Voyage if you would like to learn about what forensic anthropologists do when they aren't flirting with their cute co-workers or being shot at.

Dissecting Death, written by the medical examiner of a county in New York State, was really dreadful. Dr. Zugibe is brilliant, and humbly tells the reader so, several times in fact. He is respected and admired and often called a "real-life Quincey", he continues with his characteristic modesty. After all that, there's not much room for real information and after talking about the (pivotal) role he played in many high profile cases, none at all. I knew what had happened to the first body while he was still chatting about his own cleverness. Also, the writing. I have adopted a new rule of thumb; if the phrase "gruesome frolics" shows up on the first page, the book in question should be closed immediately.

I hope you'll post that review for Dissecting Death, so I can give it a thumbs-up. Even if the book wasn't enjoyable, your REVIEW certainly was!

I'm now reading a book set in Connecticut, but it's so bad that I'm not going to count it. I'm fine with having a state represented by a book about serial killers and poverty, but poor writing is a step too far.

#41 lol! I'm glad you have standards! Serial killers - OK, bad writers - not OK! However, I think if you managed to slog through the entire books, you should go ahead and count it - just be sure to let us know how bad it is so the rest of us can avoid it!

@39 Ha ha ha! Fantastic review! Now I kind of find myself hoping you'll stumble upon many many more crappy books...

Testing Kate is a light and frothy Chick Lit novel set at Tulane Law School in New Orleans. It's set pre-Katrina and full of details about negotiating the tourists who think everyday is Mardi Gras and the way the touristy parts of the city are next to the run down areas. Not a substantial book, but with a good sense of place.

The Last Bridge is a melodramatic story of familial disfunction. It was a rip roaring read that reminded me of Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects and Cornelia Read's Field of Darkness, up until the very last chapters when the whole thing was wrapped up a little too neatly and much to happily to match the rest of the book. With a different ending and about a hundred more pages this book could have been a knockout. It was still worth reading, but I do feel a little manipulated.

The picture of a rural Ohio community was a generic portrayal of a farming town. If I can find something a little more atmospheric, I'll replace this title.

I also used The Last Bridge for my Ohio book. I had to go back and check the location - it really could have been anywhere rural. I'm hoping to come across another Ohio book!

I usually avoid chick lit but I guess I'm going to have to read Testing Kate--I went to Tulane Law School (also featured in Grisham's Pelican Brief. Too bad I've already read about 3 other Louisiana books since this challenge started. :)

It is not a flattering portrayal of Tulane, by any stretch!

I'm currently reading a book set in Florida, only to notice now that I've already read a book for Florida.

I find that most of the books in my to be read pile are set in locations where I've already "visited" for this or one of the two other geographic challenges in which I'm participating (Canada and Europe).

Ontario and England, respectively, for me. I guess part of the point of the challenges was to push us all into reading outside of our usual patterns.

Start the "I'm sticking with England and Ontario dammit!" challenge!

No more challenges! I'm already neglecting too many as it is.

#51 lol! ;-)

ETA - on second thought , maybe this would work. You know how sometimes parents who caught their kids smoking would make them chain smoke a bunch of cigarettes until they got sick in order to break them of ever wanting to do it again? Maybe by forcing her to read only England and Ontario, we could break RidgewayGirl of the habit and thus encourage her to seek out other locations.

I have! I'm in North Carolina now, so no need for an intervention...yet.

North Carolina is one of those states where I could stay for a good long while in reading!

I think South Dakota and Rhode Island may be the most challenging, as well as Delaware. I have a book set in Omaha, Nebraska, though. Books have ended up being like serial killers or militia groups in that they tend to locate themselves in a few choice states and ignore the rest.

For Rhode Island, I recommend The Memory of running by Ron McLarty. A bittersweet and sad story of how mental illness affects a family, and a kind of accidental roadmovie across America - on a bike.

It was my first one down for this challenge and probably a big reason why I took it on: "Well, since I'm already reading a book set in tricky Rhode Island I might as well..."

One of Phyllis Whitney's novels was set around Newport, RI. I believe it was Spindrift. If you enjoy the "romantic suspense" novels, that would be a good novel. I've read a book by Katherine Towler set on one of the islands off the coast. There are two titles in the series, but I've only read the first. I may try to read the second one for my Rhode Island selection. I picked up the first because I'd read that it was supposedly set on Block Island where my ancestors had lived in the 17th-18th centuries, but I was a little disappointed because it appeared to be set on another island. I suppose you could reread Little Town on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder for South Dakota since it is set in DeSmet. There were a couple of her other books with a SD setting. If you like non-fiction, The Children's Blizzard was set in SD, I believe.

I will agree that Delaware is going to be difficult to find. Everytime you search for Delaware and fiction, you come up with the Alex Delaware series instead of books with a Delaware setting.

I think I'll just do what I usually do, and leave off worrying until I need to. As you can see, I have many, many books to read before I run out of book ideas! And by then someone will have released the perfect book on each of my "problem" states. The NC book, Serena, is excellent so far, so I'm happy.

For my North Carolina book I read Serena by Ron Rash which is set in the Appalachian Mountains near the Tennessee border. It was an excellent book and I expect it to be at least shortlisted for some national prizes. It was well researched and drew a vivid picture of the struggle to create the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the life in a logging camp during the Great Depression and life in the mountains. There were undertones of MacBeth and the lumber magnates were a ruthless and unpleasant lot and the lumberjacks knew they had a good chance of dying every day they worked.

>60 RidgewayGirl: Of course, that is "local" for us here, and I'll have to admit that people around the campus really love the book. We received it through the lease book program. We are able to keep permanently about 20% of the titles we get through that program, but I've already had multiple professors tell me that this is one that we have to keep! I haven't had a chance to read it myself yet, but I'm really looking forward to it after reading your comments.

I'm close to the mountains, in the upstate of South Carolina and have driven across the Cumberland Gap into TN, which is the picture I have in my mind of the landscape of the book. It's well worth reading, full of history and fun too.

That sounds like an interesting book.

Have you read Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey about logging in Oregon? Another member here, oregonobsessionz, told me about it quite some time ago, as a book that she recommends for everyone to read who wants to know anything about Oregon. Here's a review (from Gwendydd):

"Kesey takes a subject I normally wouldn't care about and a group of characters I normally wouldn't like and makes me really care about their outcome. The writing in this is amazing: scenes are written from several points of view simultaneously, so you get an amazing understanding of the characters and their actions. The landscape of Oregon is as active and strong a character as any of the people in the book. It's not the kind of story I generally enjoy, but the writing is just so phenomenal that this ranks among the best books I have ever read."

(And then I didn't buy the book, but watched the movie (with Paul Newman and Henry Fonda) instead!)

Thank you for the suggestion to read Serena. I've reserved a copy from my library, and can use it both for my NC choice, and as a Christmas gift for my sister and her family who vacation often in that area.

I really enjoyed my Nebraska book, The Cleanup by Sean Doolittle. The novel follows what happens when a disgraced cop relegated to patrolling the aisles of a supermarket becomes involved with the messy life of a battered check out girl. The book roars along frantically but manages to have complex, believable characters and tight plot. Omaha was vividly portrayed. I'll be looking for more books by this author.

Great review! I'm going to have to check that one out. (Not much happening on my American adventure recently. My map remains stained by merely a few little New England dots...)

#65 I saw that you've got a hot review for this book, and it looks great. I'm adding it to my wishlist and giving you thumbs up!

Bad Land: An American Romance is the story of one of the last homesteading opportunities of the American west. A hundred years ago a railway was built from Chicago to Puget Sound, across the great, unsettled expanse of North Dakota and Montana. Now railroads need customers and so "The Big Open" was advertised as a great opportunity, with homesteads carved from what previously only held a few ranches. New, scientific farming methods were sure to bring prosperity to all who farmed there. By the middle of the Great Depression, the land was almost as empty as it had been before the homesteaders arrived, the decaying towns and abandoned farmhouses the only evidence of what had once been.

Jonathan Raban, a transplanted Brit, explores the geography and the history of eastern Montana, learning about the kind of person who stayed through the worst of it and about the people who still remain. Bad Land is an intriguing combination of a social history and a contemporary look at the people who live there today. He's clearly fascinated by the place and it's impossible not to get caught up in the passion he feels for this difficult land.

>68 RidgewayGirl: Great review. This one's going on my wishlist.

Scottsboro is a fictionalized account of the infamous Scottsboro trial of 1933. Alice Whittier is a journalist working in New York for a Communist newspaper when she hears about nine black men pulled off of a train in Alabama for fighting with white men and then accused of rape by the two white women found riding the rails. Ruby Bates is one of the two women, an unemployed mill worker and sometime prostitute whose conscience eventually is awakened to what she did. The book follows the two women, focusing on Alice, through the multiple trials and American political life during the Great Depression. It is well told, the research flawlessly folded into an intriguing story.

Bad Land sounds like an interesting read. I'm adding it to the TBR pile.

Hi RidgewayGirl - Thanks so much for recommending The Cleanup. I'm only about 100 pages in but I can hardly put it down! I don't think I would have found it if I hadn't read about it here.

I'm glad you're enjoying it! It's not exactly a slow and gentle read.

For Maryland, I have just finished Life Sentences by Laura Lippman. Lippman has made a career of setting her novels in and around Baltimore with the city forming an important element. This book was no exception.

Cassandra is a writer who made a name for herself with two best-selling memoirs. Her attempt at fiction fell flat so when she discovers that an elementary school classmate spent seven years in prison when her baby disappeared, she is sure she has the makings of another book. In the course of researching what happened, Cassie explores her memories of her own childhood and encounters the different way the girls who went to school with her remembered things. The mystery of what happened to the baby takes a bit of a back seat to an exploration of the limits of memory and an interesting history of Baltimore in the sixties and early seventies, when Martin Luther King was killed and the integration of the school system. Lippman writes with a keen eye for detail and clearly loves her city. I look forward to her next book.

A Fair Maiden by Joyce Carol Oates is set in a seaside town in New Jersey. The kind of seaside town where old money matters and the wealthy are served by the poorer denizens of the towns deeper inland. Katya is from a town in the pine barrens and has a grating Jersey accent, which the reader knows because she is reminded every twenty pages. Oates does not like Jersey accents, especially Southern Jersey accents and she says so often, mentioning that no one could tell when Katya was sincere or moved or sad because everything she says is tainted with her accent. Other than that, the book was fine. I'm not a fan of Oates's tendency to paint her female characters as complicit victims and her male characters as manipulative or brutal. But the story was well told, in the guise of a fairy tale, of a lonely maiden and the man who is either her seducer or her savior.

I've been unkind to this book, I think. Oates writes well and she is rightly part of the American canon, along with Cheever and Updike and Roth. This is only the third book by Oates that I've read, and given that she has written so very much, in pretty much every genre out there, I'm not sure I can make any sweeping generalizations. I just find her distant and a bit of a snob. I'll probably read her again, when something catches my eye, but I won't be looking for it.

I'm not a fan of Oates. This is after reading only 2 books, but I won't go back to try another and do a half eye roll whenever I see her name come up. No concrete reason that I can remember. I just did not enjoy the stories, characters, or message of her books and thought her overrated.

I've read another book set in Kansas, The Scent of Rain and Lightning, which was an Early Reviewer book. Jody's parents were murdered when she was three. Twenty-three years later she's living in their house, about to begin teaching at the high school of the rural Kansas community in which she's always lived as part of the most powerful ranching family in the area. Then she finds out that the man convicted of the murders is being released after his conviction was overturned.

I had an expectation of what this book would be, based on the description and the hype surrounding her earlier book, The Virgin of Small Plains (which I have not read). I thought it would be a literary mystery, in which a crime occurs, but the characters are drawn richly and something deeper is addressed. I did find a few false notes at the beginning that should have alerted me, descriptions of people that seemed drawn from a collection of stock characters, but the book seemed to be going in an interesting direction, so I kept reading. Pickard writes ably enough, but by the end of the book, the lost threads were all neatly tied up, everyone who was important at the beginning was innocent, and the romantic pair's obstacles melted away. It was not quite a cozy, but not that far off. I think it will be an easy book club selection (that seems to be what the marketing of this book indicates as its intended target), but one in which there really is nothing controversial to discuss.

#77 "I think it will be an easy book club selection (that seems to be what the marketing of this book indicates as its intended target), but one in which there really is nothing controversial to discuss" What's the fun of that?

The marketing of this book perplexes me. It would turn away the people who know her as a cozy mystery author and who would like the book, and it would draw in the people who like their mysteries to say something more than whodunnit. But the literary mystery readers will be disappointed. I kept waiting for her to do something with what she'd set up--this perfect ranching family who were all good looking and well-to-do. I thought for the first half that she was going to show some sort of familial implosion, some sort of interesting conflict. But, in the end, it was so shallow. Even the fault lines that were there, were quickly paved over at the end and the few characters who might have been hurt by the events were simply not seen again so as not to interfere with the happy ending.

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout is one of those books riding on a wave of award nominations and general popularity. It won the Pulitzer after all. Set in a small coastal town in Maine, Olive Kitteridge consists of a series of short stories, not all having to do with the title character and only a few in which she is a main character.

She's a prickly woman, difficult and demanding, but also intuitive and caring. What struck me most, was how real she was. None of us are relentlessly good-natured or entirely unpleasant and Olive, who we meet when she is already middle-aged, is someone who prides herself in not suffering fools gladly. The writing is absolutely pitch-perfect and I was disappointed to have this book end.

I just noticed that I'd read a book for Mississippi. The Help by Kathryn Stockett is a huge bestseller and is long-listed for the Orange Prize. It's very readable and also has something to say. I'm glad to have read it.

If you don't know by know what the book is about, well, you must be the last person. There are a bazillion reviews up, so I don't think you need my opinion.

All of our conference rooms were named after streets running along the Magnificent Mile, and the view from Michigan was stupendous. The whole city was spread out before our eyes, layer after layer of buildings tall and squat, wide and thin, a giant matrix of architectural variation cut up by taxi-glinting thoroughfares and back alleyways and the snaking Chicago River, and every surface from burnished window to ancient brick was brightening under the August sun. The irony of the view from the Michigan Room was that it drove us mad with desire to be out there, walking the city sidewalks, looking up at the buildings, joining the swell of other people and enjoying the sun, but the only time we ever felt that urgency was when we were stuck at the window in the Michigan Room.

My Illinois book is set, predictably, in Chicago. The book itself is unusual in that Then We Came to the End is written in the first person plural, narrated by the employees of a large advertising firm. If you give it some thought, we do spend more time with our fellow employees than we do with the people we chose to spend time with, our family and friends. This book charts those involuntary relationships, how we view those around us. The narrators of the novel are undergoing a series of lay-offs, worried about the very jobs they've put a lot of energy into feeling dissatisfied with.

Despite the over-riding conceit of the narration, the book does have an emotional heart and, while it took me some time to become involved, I became wrapped up in the individual lives described here.

My Minnesota book is Shadow Tag by Louise Erdrich. I'm still figuring out what I think about this difficult book. Erdrich describes the dying days of a marriage, Irene hasn't loved her husband for years and is finally almost ready to leave. Gil hopes that if he avoids the topic and makes everyone happy, then the problem will disappear. He's not willing, however, to make the kind of changes that might work; he still has a hair-trigger temper and a ready hand and vindictive mouth to go with it. And the three children are just unhappy.

I like books that tackle difficult subjects, and for much of this book, Erdrich looks unflinchingly at a family approaching divorce. The book feels unfinished, however, with structures set up at the beginning of the book not carried through. Irene discovers that her husband has been reading her diary and decides to use that to manipulate him into letting her go (he has told her that she can leave, but that she will not get the children). She also has a "real" diary, but this conceit lasts for only a few entries.

Minnesota is well described though, with Irene wearing an enormous down coat to walk the children to the bus stop and ice skating on a lake.

I've added an additional book for Utah, Dogtown, as both the Non-Fiction and the Fiction candidates were of the Polygamists Behaving Badly school. This one's about some very good people taking care of badly abused dogs at an animal sanctuary. I get very weepy and sentimental about pet rescue groups so I'm not really able to review Dogtown. Suffice to say that it wasn't written that well, but the stories were full of hope.

Laura Lippman's books are filled with the atmosphere of Baltimore, Maryland and so I read Baltimore Blues as my Maryland book. It's the first in a mystery series and while the plot and all were better than average for a mystery series, the star of the book was the city of Baltimore.

My non-fiction book for Connecticut is The Devil's Rooming House, which could more accurately be called The Devil's Assisted Living Care Facility but I can see why they went for the somewhat snappier title. This is a book in the mold of The Devil in the White City, combining the story of a serial killer with a larger event, although this one was a bit of a stretch, using a twelve day long heat wave as the framing event.

I enjoy social histories, with their emphasis on how ordinary people lived. When they are done well, they are riveting, as in the aforementioned The Devil in the White City and in The Worst Hard Time. The Devil's Rooming House is not one of the good ones, however. The story concerns one of the first retirement homes in the United States, set up in Windsor, Connecticut a hundred years ago to provide a place to live, meals, assistance and a funeral for those elderly in need of a home. The owner, Amy Archer, allowed inmates to pay monthly, but the real bargain was a lifetime residency for a thousand dollars. It took a surprisingly long time, several years in fact, for the unusually high death rate in the Archer home to be noticed and even longer for enough evidence to be collected to arrest Archer. She might have continued for decades had not many inmates had relatives greedy for any money left over.

Which makes the framing device of a heat wave less than effective. There were chapters devoted to what should have be a magazine article at best. It was interesting, but didn't fit the book. Also distracting was the author's disinterest in the mechanics of the poisonings. Whenever another disease was blamed for a death the author would define the disease using an internet based definition and move on. A stronger book could have been written using the murders as a frame to discuss medical care and common illnesses of the time, but the author chose to quote from dictionary.com and move on before things could get interesting. This left very little book, so he filled pages with the making of the play Arsenic and Old Lace.

You can't say I wasn't warned because right there on the front cover of No Door, No Windows were the words Joe Schreiber, author of Star Wars: Death Troopers. But I picked it up anyway and read the first few pages, which portrayed a tender scene of a boy and his uncle playing catch. It was nicely written and felt real and I thought, hmmm, this looks like it could be good.

Well, it wasn't. Not because it wasn't scary or atmospheric, but because there was no internal cohesion holding the story together. A novel creates a world and, no matter how fantasy-based that world it, it needs to obey a set of rules, laid down by the author. A far-fetched idea like the one behind World War Z works so well because the author took the time to inhabit the world, to think of the details and to stick to them for the entire book. In 8637780::No Doors, No Windows, Schreiber throws out all his rules in favor of making it scary. It would have been a great deal scarier if he hadn't had all the characters behaving randomly at the end, so that I kept pausing to wonder if I'd gotten someone mixed up with someone else. And while the main character is well developed (although he will behave as randomly as the others at the dramatic conclusion), the secondary characters are two dimensional scraps of stereotype. If any backstory is assigned to them, they will shed it as soon as it becomes easier for the author.

On the other hand, the first half of the novel was going somewhere interesting and appropriately creepy. Scott Mast returns home to New Hampshire when his father dies and finds that his father had left behind a half-finished manuscript about a haunted house. When Scott finds the house described in his father's book, he decides to rent it and finish his father's story. Things do not go well.

So, Indiana. I'm not sure this book was especially atmospheric, beyond the small town setting, but it'll count unless I find something else.

Both of Cole's parents died in the flu pandemic that caused havoc all over the world, but especially in the US. He recovers and is rescued from an orphanage by a childless minister and his wife and taken to live in the small town of Salvation City. The book moves between Cole learning to live in this new environment and his memories of life with his atheistic parents.

What makes this book so interesting is less the new, dystopic world Nunez creates, but in her examination of religious belief. She manages to look critically at both fundamentalist belief and liberal atheism without making either out as good or bad. It's a nuanced performance and very honest. The story itself is fairly simple and while the ideas are complex, they're ones that anyone who has seriously considered their religious beliefs (or lack of same) has already considered. The book does read like a YA novel in language and presentation. The story itself is very easy to read, even as it made me think and think and think.

My one criticism of this book is that, at the end, Nunez drastically changed the behaviors of a few of her main characters, giving Cole an easy out to the dilemma he faced. It just didn't fit and felt like she was trying to get the book somewhere it didn't want to go. Despite that, Salvation City is a book well worth reading, and enjoyable too.

Forever on the Mountain by James M. Tabor is set on Alaska's Mt. Denali, the tallest peak in North America.

In 1967, a group of 12 climbers set off to climb Denali, the tallest mountain in North America. A month later, seven climbers are left dead on the mountain, victims of bureaucratic missteps, poor leadership and a storm that arose unexpectedly and raged for ten days. The most attention is given to the dynamics of the group of climbers and how their 24 year old leader, Joe Wilcox, was held to blame by many for the disaster. Tabor is convinced of Wilcox's innocence, driving the point home relentlessly over the course of the book.

Wilcox was the kind of guy who preferred to be in charge, was quick to take offense and who was a poor leader, but the men who chose to climb with him were all adults and responsible for their own safety. The National Park Service, still smarting from a media drubbing over the cost of a rescue effort just a few months before, refused to begin organizing a rescue at all, depending instead on other groups of climbers already on the mountain. And then there was that storm, which arose without warning and continued for ten full days.

The story transcends the writing while the men are on the mountain. I recommend sticking with this book through the slow and overlong opening, because when the climbers reach Denali, you won't be able to put the book down.