Get motivated with books and travel suggestions from the 50-state book tour
Writers create the places we visit
Writer’s thoughts on travel:
Not all those who wander are lost.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
Writer’s thoughts on America:
“This is the story of America. Everybody’s doing what they think they’re supposed to do.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road: The Original Scroll
The 50 State Book Tour continues to the following states.
Oklahoma
Oklahoma ‘s best read is Paradise by Toni Morrison
They shoot the white girl first. With the others, they can take their time.” Toni Morrison’s first novel since she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature opens with a horrifying scene of mob violence then chronicles its genesis in a small all-black town in rural Oklahoma. Founded by descendants of freed slaves as intent on isolating themselves from the outside world as it once was on rejecting them, the patriarchal community of Ruby is built on righteousness, rigidly enforced moral law, and fea
Oregon
Oregon’s best read is One flew over the cuckoo’s nest by Ken Kesey
An international bestseller and the basis for the hugely successful film, Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is one of the defining works of the 1960s.
In this classic novel, Ken Kesey’s hero is Randle Patrick McMurphy, a boisterous, brawling, fun-loving rebel who swaggers into the world of a mental hospital and takes over. A lusty, life-affirming fighter, McMurphy rallies the other patients around him by challenging the dictatorship of Nurse Ratchet. He promotes gambling in the ward, smuggles in wine and women, and openly defies the rules at every turn. But this defiance, which starts as a sport, soon develops into a grim struggle, an all-out war between two relentless opponents: Nurse Ratchet, backed by the full power of authority, and McMurphy, who has only his own indomitable will.
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania’s best read is The Lovely Bones by Sebold Alice
My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973. My murderer was a man from our neighborhood. My mother liked his border flowers, and my father talked to him once about fertilizer. This is Susie Salmon. Watching from heaven, Susie sees her happy, suburban family devastated by her death, isolated even from one another as they each try to cope with their terrible loss alone
Rhode Island
Rhode Island best read is My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult
Jodi Picoult tells the story of a girl who decides to sue her parents for the rights to her own body in this New York Times bestseller that tackles a controversial subject with grace and explores what it means to be a good person.
