Read Around North America Challenge

Read at least one book by an author from each country in North America.

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Recommended Challenge Books (315)
251.

The Dispossessed : A Novel by Ursula K. Le Guin EN

Rating: 5     1 Vote
Description:
Centuries ago, the moon Anarres was settled by utopian anarchists who left the Earthlike planet Urras in search of a better world, a new beginning. Now a brilliant physicist, Shevek, determines to reunite the two civilizations that have been separated by hatred since long before he was born. The Dispossessed is a penetrating examination of society and humanity -- and one man's brave undertaking to question the unquestionable and ignite the fires of change.
Recommended: 13 Nov 2022

252.
Travels with Charley

Travels with Charley : In Search of America by John Steinbeck EN

Rating: 4     3297 Votes
Description:
In 1960, when he was almost 60 years old, John Steinbeck set out to rediscover the United States, feeling he might have lost touch with its sights sounds and the essence of its people. This book decribes his travels in a pick-up truck across nearly 40 states with his dog Charlie, a French poodle.
Recommended: 16 Nov 2022

253.
Cat's Cradle

Cat's Cradle : A Novel by Kurt Vonnegut EN

Rating: 5     3 Votes
Description:
“A free-wheeling vehicle . . . an unforgettable ride!”—The New York Times Cat’s Cradle is Kurt Vonnegut’s satirical commentary on modern man and his madness. An apocalyptic tale of this planet’s ultimate fate, it features a midget as the protagonist, a complete, original theology created by a calypso singer, and a vision of the future that is at once blackly fatalistic and hilariously funny. A book that left an indelible mark on an entire generation of readers, Cat’s Cradle is one of the twentieth century’s most important works—and Vonnegut at his very best. “[Vonnegut is] an unimitative and i... continue


255.
In Morocco

In Morocco by Wharton, Edith EN

Rating: 3.3     3 Votes
Description:
First published in 1919, this detailed account of the author's journey through Morocco following World War I shares Wharton's observations on local customs and lifestyles, Moroccan history, cities, and more. Reprint.

256.
The Sentence

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich EN

Rating: 4     45 Votes
Description:
In this powerful and timely novel, National Book Award winning author Louise Erdrich explores how the burdens of history, and especially identity, appropriation, exploitation, and violence done to human beings in the name of justice, manifest in ordinary lives today. Revolving around a small independent bookstore in contemporary Minneapolis, The Sentence follows a turbulent year in the life of a strong though vulnerable Ojibwe woman named Tookie. After serving part of an outrageously long sentence, Tookie, who "learned to read with murderous attention" while in prison, naturally gravitates tow... continue
Recommended: 27 Dec 2022

257.
The Night Watchman

The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich EN

Rating: 4     49 Votes
Description:
A novel based on the life of "Erdrich's grandfather, who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C."--Dust jacket flap.

258.
How the Word Is Passed

How the Word Is Passed : A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith, III EN

Rating: 5     1 Vote
Description:
Poet and contributor to The Atlantic Clint Smith's revealing, contemporary portrait of America as a slave owning nation Beginning in his own hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads the reader through an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks-those that are honest about the past and those that are not-that offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation's collective history, and ourselves. It is the story of the Monticello Plantation in Virginia, the estate where Thomas Jefferson wrote letters espousing the urgent need for liberty while enslaving... continue

259.
The Bluest Eye

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison EN

Rating: 3.5     110 Votes
Description:
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner—a powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity that asks questions about race, class, and gender with characteristic subtly and grace. In Morrison’s acclaimed first novel, Pecola Breedlove—an 11-year-old Black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others—prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning, and the tragedy of its... continue

260.
Night of the Living Rez

Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty EN

Rating: 4.6     9 Votes
Description:
Set in a Native community in Maine, Night of the Living Rez is a riveting debut collection about what it means to be Penobscot in the twenty-first century and what it means to live, to survive, and to persevere after tragedy. In twelve striking, luminescent stories, author Morgan Talty—with searing humor, abiding compassion, and deep insight—breathes life into tales of family and a community as they struggle with a painful past and an uncertain future. A boy unearths a jar that holds an old curse, which sets into motion his family’s unraveling; a man, while trying to swindle some pot from a de... continue


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