Michigan

Jill said, "Hi, Bonnie: I finished Middlesex for this challenge, which was set in Detroit, Michigan. While I was disappointed with the book, I did learn a lot about Detroit throughout the 20th century, and that part was interesting. Here's my review."

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides was the winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, was nominated for the 2002 National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction, and was a 2002 Lambda Literary Award Finalist, Transgender. Just threw that in to counter Jill's disappointment with the book.

In the spring of 1974, Calliope Stephanides, a student at a girls' school in Grosse Pointe, finds herself drawn to a chain-smoking, strawberry blond classmate with a gift for acting. The passion that furtively develops between them, along with Callie's failure to develop, leads Callie to suspect that she is not like other girls. In fact, she is not really a girl at all.

The explanation for this shocking state of affairs takes us out of suburbia, back before the Detroit race riots of 1967, before the rise of the Motor City and Prohibition, to 1922, when the Turks sacked Smyrna and Callie's grandparents fled for their lives. Back to a tiny village in Asia Minor where two lovers, and one rare genetic mutation, set in motion the metamorphosis that will turn Callie into a being both mythical and perfectly real: a hermaphrodite.

Spanning eight decades and one unusually awkward adolescence, this novel is a grand, utterly original fable of crossed bloodlines, the intricacies of gender, and the deep, untidy promptings of desire.
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Teddy Rose has also reviewed Middlesex.

How to join this challenge

All you have to do to join the challenge is make yourself a list of what you want to read. You may change the list at any time, add to it, take away yucky choices, or add books one at a time as you read them. Post your questions on the blog, so the answers will help other bloggers. When you finish a good book, tell us about it. If you provide a link to your actual post about a book, I'll add the link so others may see what you thought about the book. Suggest titles of books you run across, especially ones that you think are good. Share your thoughts with us by clicking on COMMENTS below any of the posts you happen to be reading, and I'll be notified that I have a comment.

I'll probably never know how many people around the world are doing this challenge, but that's okay. I think we should help each other, but many are afraid to post their names online. It's okay to use an alias or screen name. It's okay to be anonymous. But it's also okay to say, "This is what I think about the book." Then tell us. Was it wonderful? awful? so-so? a keeper? What did you like about it? I have a set of book review questions on my other blog ... Bonnie's Books ... which I should probably post on ALL my bookish blogs. You'll find it in the links below my icon: Book review outline.

New Hampshire

Jill said, "I finished Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult, which is set in NH. Here's my review."

In nineteen minutes, you can mow the front lawn, color your hair, watch a third of a hockey game. In nineteen minutes, you can bake scones or get a tooth filled by a dentist; you can fold laundry for a family of five. ... In nineteen minutes, you can stop the world, or you can just jump off it. In nineteen minutes, you can get revenge.

Sterling is a small, ordinary New Hampshire town where nothing ever happens — until the day its complacency is shattered by a shocking act of violence. In the aftermath, the town's residents must not only seek justice in order to begin healing, but also come to terms with the role they played in the tragedy. For them, the lines between truth and fiction, right and wrong, insider and outsider have been obscured forever. Josie Cormier, the teenage daughter of the judge sitting on the case, could be the state's best witness, but she can't remember what happened in front of her own eyes. And as the trial progresses, fault lines between the high school and the adult community begin to show, destroying the closest of friendships and families.

Nineteen Minutes is New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult's most raw, honest, and important novel yet. Told with the straightforward style for which she has become known, it asks simple questions that have no easy answers: Can your own child become a mystery to you? What does it mean to be different in our society? Is it ever okay for a victim to strike back? And who — if anyone — has the right to judge someone else?

Kentucky

Framed said, "Josh Akers wrote this review on Amazon about River of Earth by James Still: 'James Still has exquisitely and intricately chronicled what it is like to be born, live, and die in the hills of eastern Kentucky. Natives of the region will read the book and feel attached to the book if by nothing else but the geography. Others will be drawn into the book by the sincerity and realism of the characters. Still, the poet laureate of Kentucky, beautifully relates the attachment of eastern Kentuckians to the mountain soil in spite of the poverty and hard living that they must endure. More than that, however, it is a story of inspiration and coming of age. I highly recommend it to anyone.'"

River of Earth by James Still chronicles the poverty of early 20th century Appalachian coal miners and their struggle to care for their families, make ends meet, and maintain their humanity in an industry that provides only obstacles. The story is seen through the eyes of a small boy and covers three years in the life of his family and their kin.

Montana

Framed said, "I just read English Creek by Ivan Doig, which is set in late-Depression era Montana. Like your other Montana suggestion, it involves the U S Forest Service and a host of other memorable characters. The narrator, a fourteen-year-old boy named Jick is particularly well-written."

In this prizewinning portrait of a time and place — Montana in the 1930s — that at once inspires and fulfills a longing for an explicable past, Ivan Doig has created one of the most captivating families in American fiction, the McCaskills. The witty and haunting narration, a masterpiece of vernacular in the tradition of Twain, follows the events of the Two Medicine country's summer: the tide of sheep moving into the high country, the capering Fourth of July rodeo and community dance, and an end-of-August forest fire high in the Rockies that brings the book, as well as the McCaskill family's struggle within itself, to a stunning climax. It is a season of escapade as well as drama, during which fourteen-year-old Jick comes of age. Through his eyes we see those nearest and dearest to him at a turning point — "where all four of our lives made their bend" — and discover along with him his own connection to the land, to history, and to the deep-fathomed mysteries of one's kin and one's self.

Ohio

Framed said, "Lynne also suggested The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio by Terry Ryan for Ohio. It's about a woman who supports her ten children in the fifties and sixties by entering contests. The comments on Amazon were very positive. I've added it to my list and even bookmooched it."

The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio: How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words or Less by Terry Ryan introduces Evelyn Ryan, an enterprising woman who kept poverty at bay with wit, poetry, and perfect prose during the "contest era" of the 1950s and 1960s. Evelyn's winning ways defied the church, her alcoholic husband, and antiquated views of housewives. To her, flouting convention was a small price to pay when it came to raising her six sons and four daughters. Graced with a rare appreciation for life's inherent hilarity, Evelyn turned every financial challenge into an opportunity for fun and profit. The story of this irrepressible woman, whose clever entries are worthy of Erma Bombeck, Dorothy Parker, and Ogden Nash, is told by her daughter Terry with an infectious joy that shows how a winning spirit will always triumph over poverty.

Indiana

Framed said, "I found In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash by Jean Shepherd for Indiana. It's a humorous novel and I need some laughter right now. I may have to do this challenge twice."

Jean Shepherd was a master writer who spun the materials of his all-American childhood into immensely resonant —and utterly hilarious — works of comic art. In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash represents one of the peaks of his achievement, a compound of irony, affection, and perfect detail that speaks across generations. Shepherd's wildly witty reunion with his Indiana hometown disproves the adage "You can never go back." Bending the ear of Flick, his childhood-buddy-turned-bartender, Shepherd recalls passionately his genuine Red Ryder BB gun, confesses adolescent failure in the arms of Junie Jo Prewitt, and relives a story of man against fish that not even Hemingway could rival. From pop art to the World's Fair, Shepherd's subjects speak with a universal irony and are deeply and unabashedly grounded in American Midwestern life, together rendering a wonderfully nostalgic impression of a more innocent era when life was good, fun was clean, and station wagons roamed the earth. Shepherd may have accomplished for Holden, Indiana, what Mark Twain did for Hannibal, Missouri. And by the way, the movie "A Christmas Story" is based on a single chapter of this book.
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Jill said, "I read this book too! Here is my review. Quite funny and great look at Indiana during the depression."

Massachusetts

Framed said, "I listed Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick for my Massachusetts book. Probably because I own it, but I've heard good things about it also."

Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick tracks the Pilgrims from their perilous 1620 transatlantic crossing to the bloody battles of King Philip's War (1675-76). With compelling detail, he describes the delicate social ecology achieved by the Pilgrims and Native Americans before it was broken by a deadly war of attrition. His carefully modulated story blends acts of settler courage and kindness with those of savagery and cowardice. The Mayflower Compact degenerated into a divisive debate of war and peace. Captain Miles Standish, military advisor for the Pilgrims, argued for a ruthless bellicosity, while Edward Winslow, a deputy governor of Plymouth Colony, sought a negotiated settlement with the Indians. A major nonfiction work. Nathaniel Philbrick is the author of the New York Times bestseller In the Heart of the Sea, which won the National Book Award, and Sea of Glory, winner of the Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt Naval History Prize.

New Jersey

3M said, "There are some Pulitzers that are set in these states, but I have no idea if the setting is integral to the book: New Jersey - American Pastoral by Philip Roth (I don't like Roth, but it’s a Pulitzer) ... Independence Day by Richard Ford (Pulitzer)."

In American Pastoral by Philip Roth, Seymour "Swede" Levov — a legendary high school athlete, a devoted family man, a hard worker, the prosperous inheritor of his father's Newark glove factory — comes of age in thriving, triumphant postwar America. But everything he loves is lost when the country begins to run amok in the turbulent 1960s. Not even the most private, well-intentioned citizens, it seems, get to sidestep the sweep of history. American Pastoral is the story of a fortunate American's rise and fall — of a strong, confident master of social equilibrium overwhelmed by the forces of social disorder. For the Swede is not allowed to stay forever blissful inside the beloved hundred-and-seventy-year-old stone farmhouse, in rural Old Rimrock, where he lives with his pretty wife — the college sweetheart who was Miss New Jersey of 1949 — and the lively, precocious daughter who is the apple of his eye. The apple of his eye, that is, until she grows up to be a revolutionary terrorist bent on destroying her father's paradise. American Pastoral presents a vivid portrait of how the innocence of Swede Levov is swept away by the times — of how everything industriously created by his family in America over three generations is left in a shambles by the explosion of a bomb in his own bucolic backyard.

Independence Day is essentially an internal monologue, set on the long July 4th weekend of 1988. In this sequel to The Sportswriter, the protagonist is Frank Bascombe, a divorced, well-educated former sportswriter who now makes his living selling real estate in the affluent New Jersey town of Haddam, while supplementing his earnings with a couple of rental properties he owns in the town's African American neighborhood. While Frank is trying to give his disinterested son a civics lesson on the meaning of Independence Day, Paul feigns confusion and asks a question or two, which Frank knows were really meant to mock him. Paul delights at ridiculing the hall of fame.

Massachusetts

3M said, "There are some Pulitzers that are set in these states, but I have no idea if the setting is integral to the book: Massachusetts - The Late George Apley by John Phillips Marquand (Pulitzer)."

John P. Marquand (1893-1960) wrote several widely admired and bestselling novels, among them the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Late George Apley (1937). Sweeping us into the inner sanctum of Boston society, into the Beacon Hill town houses and exclusive private clubs where only the city's wealthiest and most powerful congregate, this novel gives us — through the story of one family and its patriarch, the recently deceased George Apley — the portrait of an entire society in transition. Gently satirical and rich with drama, the novel moves from the Gilded Age to the Great Depression as it projects George Apley's world — and subtly reveals a life in which success and accomplishment mask disappointment and regret, a life of extreme and enviable privilege that is nonetheless an imperfect life.