Are You Up to a Challenge?

2014: new year, new challenges. And we here at the library are always up for a literary challenge.  That’s why this year a few of us have decided to travel the good ol’ USA in 50 books.

The idea of this challenge is to find and read a book (preferably one you haven’t read before) that takes place in each state. But, be aware, there are some rules to this. You cannot count one book for several different states. For example, Neil Gaiman’s American Gods hops all over the place from Minnesota to Tennessee. It could not be counted for both states (or all the ones mentioned in between). Books need the majority of their story to take place in the state you’re counting. If a protagonist spends most of the book talking about his/her childhood in Connecticut and then at the end moves to New York, that’s fine. Count it for Connecticut!

The library staff has decided to participate using only books that are located in each state, but there are other versions of this challenge that allow people to pick authors from each state, too. This challenge can be fine-tuned to whatever you wish to make it. We have one person here who is limiting her selections to only murder mysteries!

So far we’ve traveled to New Hampshire, Tennessee and Louisiana. We realize it might be a challenge figuring out which books to choose from each state so we’ll keep you updated on Pinterest with where we’ve gone and the books we’ve read. There is also this handy INFOGRAPHIC showing the most famous books set in each state that may give you some ideas.

We invite anyone who wants to participate to join and share with us their finds! Print out this MAP to color in and help keep track of where you’ve been.

Happy traveling!