Missoula Reads
The 7th annual Missoula Reads year-long reading challenge
Read one book in each of 50 categories by December 29 and win a fabulous prize! Visit the Missoula Reads display near the elevators on the third floor to pick up your free reading log.
Friendly reference staff members will be available all year to suggest titles or to chat about the challenge. Email us any time at
*Missoula Reads is open to Missoula Public Library cardholders only.
Be sure to catch the Seeley Reads podcast on Soundcloud
Hear about the books our Seeley Lake branch librarians are reading as they work their way through the 2023 challenge.
50 Categories
Find all categories listed here. For reading recommendations in select categories, see below. Download a pdf copy of the categories
200 Pages or Fewer
2022 Montana Book Award Nominee*
400 Pages or More
About a Real Person*
Anthology or Collection
Any ebook, any audiobook, or re-read an old favorite
Art or Craft
Author Shares Your Zodiac Sign
Author Used a Pen Name*
Author’s Last Name Starts with a Vowel
Author’s Photo on the Back Cover
Blue Cover
Book from a Series
Book You Abandoned in the Past
Business, Entrepreneurship or Marketing
Civil Rights
Classic You’ve Been Avoiding
Community Read: The Cold Millions*
Country in the Title*
Current Event
Food
Genre-bending*
Job Title in the Title
Leaves on the Cover
Lots of Photos
Made into a Movie/Show*
Magic Realism*
Mark Twain
Mindfulness
Published in 2023
Question in the Title*
Read it For the Title*
Recently Challenged*
Recently-deceased Author*
Revenge*
Science Fiction
Seasonal
Set During a War*
Set in a Place You’d Like to Visit
Spooky
Sports
Steamy
Takes Place in a Foreign Country*
Three Words in the Title
Transportation
Travel Guide*
Weather*
Western
Written by a Josephine Miles Award Winner*
Young Adult Fiction
Select Reading Lists
*Winner:
On a Benediction of Wind by Charles Finn
Honor books:
Lucky Turtle by Bill Roorbach
Montana Modernists: Shifting Perspectives of Western Art by Michele Corriel
River You Touch: Making a Life on Moving Water by Chris Dombrowski
Nominees:
- Air Boat by Jacek Waliszewski
- The Alpha Female Wolf: The Fierce Legacy of Yellowstone’s 06 by RickMcIntyre
- Birthing the West: Mothers and Midwives in the Rockies and Plains by Jennifer J. Hill
- Crazy Mountain by Elise Atchison
- Doctor Refurb by Marty Essen
- Going It Alone by Paul Zarzyski
- Hannah’s Legacy – In This New and Wonderful Country by Donna Scobee Scott
- Hell and Back by Craig Johnson
- Hired Hand by John Hansen
- In Celebration by Dorothy Bradley
- Jump Into Action by Katie Strong
- Jumper by Melody Crowder
- Lovely and Dangerous Launch of Lucy Cavanaugh by Stacy Peterson
- Madman in the Woods: Life Next Door to the Unabomber by Jamie Gehring
- The Many Daughters of Afong Moy by Jamie Ford
- The Middle Kingdom Under the Big Sky: A History of the Chinese Experience in Montana by Mark T. Johnson
- Montana Panoramic by Craig W. Hergert
- Nothing Got Broke by Larry Slonaker
- Pandora’s Lockbox by Nico Griffith
- Rowdy Randy Wild West Show by Casey Rislov
- Shadow Man: An Elusive Psycho Killer and the Birth of FBI Profiling by Ron Franscell
- Sometimes it Feels Like Far by Gary Spetz
- Taft: The Story of the St. Paul Pass and America’s Wickedest City by Charles Donnelly
- Term Between by Brady Harrison
- This America of Ours: Bernard and Avis DeVoto and the Forgotten Fight to Save the World by Nate Schweber
- Trout Town by Dave Ames
- Unfollowers by Leigh Ann Ruggiero
- Was It Worth It?: A Wilderness Warrior’s Long Trail Home by Doug Peacock
- Wilted Wings: A Hunter’s Fight for Eagles by Mike McTee
- With Great Discretion by J. Hoolihan Clayton
Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb by Melanie Benjamin
A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
Circling the Sun by Paula McLain
Georgia: A Novel of Georgia O’Keefe by Dawn Tripp
I Was Anastasia by Ariel Lawhorn
The Marriage of Opposites by Alice Hoffman
The Master by Colm Tóibín
The Race for Paris by Meg Waite Clayton
The Secrets of Mary Bowser by Lois Leveen
See What I Have Done by Sarah Schmidt
The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris
A Touch of Stardust by Kate Alcott
The True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
White Houses by Amy Bloom
Join us in September 2023 to celebrate the Big Read. Together, we will read The Cold Millions by Jess Walter; free copies will be available. (If you have already read the book, please attend a Big Read program to complete this category.)
America’s First Daughter by Stephanie Dray
Country Strong by Linda Lael Miller
Forgotten Country by Catherine Chung
Ghost Country by Sara Paretsky
Hard Country by Chad Merriman
Indian Country by Dorothy M. Johnson
Infinite Country by Patricia Engel
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
Miss Burma by Charmaine Craig
Murder in Little Italy by Victoria Thompson
My Cat Yugoslavia by Pajtim Statovci
Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey
Russian Winter by Daphne Kalotay
Sarum: The Novel of England by Edward Rutherford
Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata
Genre-bending novels and stories place classic story elements, tropes, or character archetypes into unexpected settings.
4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster
Awayland: Stories by Ramona Ausubel
The Bird King by G. Willow Wilson
The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber
Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
A Guide to Being Born: Stories by Ramona Ausubel
Hag-seed by Margaret Atwood
Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado
Never Have I Ever: Stories by Isabel Yap
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Terra Nullius by Claire G. Coleman
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
What it Means When a Man Falls From the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah
The White Book by Kang Han
Zone One by Colson Whitehead
Anatomy of a Scandal by Sarah Vaughan
Bullet Train by Kotaro Isaka
Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney
Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie
Heartstopper by Alice Oseman
Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll
Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris by Paul Gallico
No Exit by Taylor Adams
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Pieces of Her by Karin Slaughter
She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story that Helped Ignite a Movement by Jodi Kantor & Megan Twohey
The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han
Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer
The Wonder by Emma Donoghue
Brittanica defines magic realism as a “chiefly Latin-American narrative strategy that is characterized by the matter-of-fact inclusion of fantastic or mythical elements into seemingly realistic fiction.”
The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell
Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie
The House of the Spirits by Isabell Allende
The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin
Life of Pi by Yan Martel
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
Of Bees and Mist by Erick Setiawan
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
Swamplandia! by Karen Russell
A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
The World that We Knew by Alice Hoffman
Are Men Necessary? by Maureen Dowd
Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? by F.B.M. de Waal
Are You Afraid of the Dark? by Sidney Sheldon
Are You Experienced? by Jordan Sonnenblick
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
Do the Windows Open? by Julie Hecht
Does My Head Look Big in This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah
Is that a Fish in Your Ear? by David Bellos
M or F? by Lisa Papademetriou
What was She Thinking? by Zoe Heller
When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? by George Carlin
Where Are the Children? By Mary Higgins Clark
Why are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? By Beverly Daniel Tatum
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? By Jeanette Winterson
Why Do I Love These People? by Po Bronson
Has a funny, unusual or compelling title caught your eye recently? Read that book to satisfy this category.
The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story by Nikole Hannah-Jones
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson
Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out by Susan Kuklin
City of Thieves by David Benioff
A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas
Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
In the Dream House by Carmen Machado
Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin
Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Pérez
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You by Jason Reynolds
Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
Honor an author who has passed away since 2020 by reading their work. (This list is not exhaustive.)
All the Seas of the World by Guy Gavriel Kay
The Change by Kirsten Miller
Confessions by Kanae Minato
The Female of the Species by Mindy McGinnis
Here Goes Nothing by Steve Toltz
The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner
The Lowering Days by Gregory Brown
Save Me From Dangerous Men by S.A. Lelchuk
Shutter by Ramona Emerson
So Happy for You by Celia Laskey
They Never Learn by Layne Fargo
True Grit by Charles Portis
Version Zero by David Yoon
We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker
Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Marie Remarque
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The Key to Rebecca by Ken Follett
The Most Precious of Cargoes by Jean-Claude Grumberg
Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene
Regeneration by Pat Barker
Slaughterhouse-five by Kurt Vonnegut
Suite Française by Irene Némirovsky
A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes
The Winter Soldier by Daniel Mason
The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers
The Yellow Bird Sings by Jennifer Rosner
The Boat People by Sharon Bala
The Body in the Castle Well by Martin Walker
A Burning by Magha Majumdar
Burial Rites by Hannah Kent
The Children’s Train by Viola Ardone
The House of Ashes by Stuart Neville
Memorial by Bryan Washington
The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry
Palmares by Gayl Jones
Send for Me by Lauren Fox
Strange Beasts of China by Ge Yan
Your Ad Could Go Here by O.S. Zabuzhko
We Were Never Here by Andrea Bartz
Travel guides are located at the following Dewey Decimal call numbers:
- African – 916
- Asian – 915
- European – 914
- North American – 917
- South American – 918
- United States – 917.3
After Sundown by Linda Howard
Death in the Family by Tessa Wegert
Don’t Make Me Turn This Life Around by Camille Pagán
Freaks of the Storm: From Flying Cows to Stealing Thunder, the World’s Strangest True Weather Stories by Randall S. Cerveny
The Girl from Widow Hills by Megan Miranda
The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley
My Coney Island Baby by Billy O’Callaghan
Outside by Ragnar Jónasson
Rain: A Natural and Cultural History by Cynthia Barnett
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Storm by George R. Stewart
Stormland by John Shirley
Weather: A Very Short Introduction by Storm Dunlop
Weather or Not?: The Personal and Commercial Impacts of Weather and Climate by Jim N.R. Dale
Wintering by Peter Geye
The Josephine Miles Award promotes works of excellence by writers of all cultural and racial backgrounds and educates both the public and the media as to the nature of multicultural work. For a list of winners, please visit the PEN Oakland website.