Read Around North America Challenge

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

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Best books from North America (2060)
911.

Anatomy of a Disappearance by Hisham Matar EN

Rating: 4 (2 votes)
Description:
Nuri is a young boy when his mother dies. It seems that nothing will fill the emptiness that her strange death leaves behind in the Cairo apartment he shares with his father. Until Mona. When Nuri first sees Mona, sitting in her bright yellow swimsuit by the pool of the Magda Marina holiday resort, the rest of the world vanishes. But it is Nuri's father with whom Mona falls in love and who she will eventually marry. And their happiness consumes Nuri to the point where he longs to get his father out of the way. However, Nuri will soon regret what he wished for. And, as he and his stepmother's w... continue

912.

In Morocco by Wharton, Edith EN

Rating: 4 (1 vote)
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.

913.

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich EN

Rating: 5 (2 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

914.

The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich EN

Rating: 5 (5 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.

915.

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

Rating: 5 (2 votes)
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

916.

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison EN

Rating: 5 (10 votes)
Description:
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A PARADE BEST BOOK OF ALL TIME • 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 subtlety 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 h... continue

917.

Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty EN

Rating: 5 (2 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

918.

How to Fly (in Ten Thousand Easy Lessons) : Poetry by Barbara Kingsolver EN

Rating: 5 (1 vote)
Description:
In this intimate collection, the beloved author of The Poisonwood Bible and more than a dozen other New York Times bestsellers, winner or finalist for the Pulitzer and countless other prizes, now trains her eye on the everyday and the metaphysical in poems that are smartly crafted, emotionally rich, and luminous. In her second poetry collection, Barbara Kingsolver offers reflections on the practical, the spiritual, and the wild. She begins with "how to" poems addressing everyday matters such as being hopeful, married, divorced; shearing a sheep; praying to unreliable gods; doing nothing at all... continue

919.

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson EN

Rating: 5 (2 votes)
Description:
A New York Times Bestseller and National Book Award Winner Jacqueline Woodson, the acclaimed author of Red at the Bone, tells the moving story of her childhood in mesmerizing verse. Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement. Touching and powerful, each poem is both accessible and emotionally charged, each line a glimpse into a child’s soul as she searches for... continue

920.

Crazy Brave : A Memoir by Joy Harjo EN

Rating: 5 (1 vote)
Description:
A “raw and honest” (Los Angeles Review of Books) memoir from the first Native American Poet Laureate of the United States. In this transcendent memoir, grounded in tribal myth and ancestry, music and poetry, Joy Harjo details her journey to becoming a poet. Born in Oklahoma, the end place of the Trail of Tears, Harjo grew up learning to dodge an abusive stepfather by finding shelter in her imagination, a deep spiritual life, and connection with the natural world. Narrating the complexities of betrayal and love, Crazy Brave is a haunting, visionary memoir about family and the breaking apart nec... continue


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