Missoula Reads
The 6th annual Missoula Reads year-long reading challenge
Read one book in each of 50 categories by December 30 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.
50 Categories
Find all categories listed here. For reading recommendations in select categories, see below.
200 Pages or Fewer
2021 Montana Book Award Nominee*
300 Pages or More
A Book You’ve Been Meaning to Read
Any ebook, any audiobook, or re-read an old favorite
Body Part in the Title*
Book Chat Bag Title*
Borrowed from a Friend
Cats
Collaborative Authors*
Crafty
Double-talk Title*
Essay Collection
Fantasy
Funny
Immigrant Experience*
Instant Classic*
Leisure Activity
Maps*
Military
Mystery
Natural Science*
Novel by Dickens
Orange Cover
Over the Rainbow Longlist Title*
Philosophy
Photography
Picaresque*
Pirates
Poetry Collection
Protagonist is a Doctor
Published in 2022
Redheads*
Royalty
Scandi Fiction*
Scary
Secrets
Set in Montana
Set in Your Grandparents’ Era
Social Science*
Soothing
Space Travel
Staff Pick or Reader’s Choice
Time Travel
Titillating
Title Starts with First Letter of Your First Name
Ugly Cover
Westward Expansion*
World Reading Challenge Book*
Young Adult Fiction
Select Reading Lists
And It Will Be a Beautiful Life by Craig Lancaster
Aviary by Dierdre McNamer
Backtracking In Memory by Nancy Cooper Russell
Bison: Portrait of an Icon by Audrey Hall and Chase Ewald
Bitterroot Lake by Alicia Beckman
HONOR BOOK Blood is Not the Water by Mara Panich
WINNER Brothers on Three: A True Story of Family, Resistance, and Hope on a Reservation in Montana by Abraham Streep
Carry Me Home by Janet Fox
Center of Everything by Jamie Harrison
Commendable Discretion by J. Hoolihan Clayton
Dark and Light Verse by Allen Lee Ireland
Fox and I: An Uncommon Friendship by Catherine Raven
Full Ecology: Repairing Our Relationship with the Natural World by Mary Clare and Gary Ferguson
Full Mag: Veteran Stories Illustrated by Brian Prahl, et al
Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead
Gunfight: My Battle Against the Industry that Radicalized America by Ryan Busse
Hairpin Bridge by Taylor Adams
Hits, Heathens and Hippos by Marty Essen
HONOR BOOK Home Waters: A Chronicle of Family and a River by John Maclean
In the Weeds by Mark Gibbons
Inside Passage by Keema Waterfield
Jack Horner, Dinosaur Hunter! by Sophia Gholz
Legend Keepers by Bruce Smith
Maddie McDowell and the Rodeo Robbery by Luann M. Rod
Montana History for Kids in 50 Objects by Steph Lehmann
Out of the Water by Ann Marie Stewart
Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles
The Redemption of Wolf 302: From Renegade to Yellowstone Alpha Male by Rick McIntyre
Remarkable Cause by Jean C. O’Connor
HONOR BOOK Ridgeline by Michael Punke
Ridgerunner by Gil Adamson
Secret Life: An Adaptation of a Story by Jeff VanderMeer by Theo Ellsworth
Sounds of Home by Debbie Boyle
Spring: A Mythic Memoir by Annie Connole
HONOR BOOK Stone Sister by Caroline Patterson
SunAlaska by Cinzia Dal Lago
We March at Midnight: A War Memoir by Ray McPadden
Wild Man by Charles Alexander
Years Beyond the River by David Axelrod
You Belong Here Now by Dianna Rostad
The Arm: Inside the Billion-dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports by Jeff Passan
Buddha’s Little Finger by Viktor Pelevin
Golden Arm by Carl Deuker
Hand Raised: The Barns of Montana by Chere Jiusto
Head Case: My Brain and Other Wonders by Cole Cohen
Head Over Heels by Hannah Orenstein
The Hundred-foot Journey by Richard C. Morais
Murder at Five Finger Light by Sue Henry
The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot by Robert MacFarlane
One Foot in the Grove by Kelly Lane
Red Right Hand by Chris F. Holm
Sun on My Head: Stories by Geovani Martins
Traveling on One Leg by Herta Müller
Where the Trout are as Long as Your Leg by John Gierach
The Wooden Leg of Inspector Anders by Marshall Browne
World Made by Hand by James Howard Kunstler
For a current list of the library’s book chat bag selections, please visit https://www.missoulapubliclibrary.org/home/collections/book-kits/
Between the Lines by Jodi Picoult and Samantha Van Leer
The Cinderella Murder by Mary Higgins Clark and Alafair Burke
The Explorers Guild by Kevin Costner and John Baird
Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchet
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
Heads You Lose by Lisa Lutz and David Hayward
Hotel Angeline: A Novel in 36 Voices by various authors
Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff
Relic by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
The Royal We by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan
S. by J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst
Some Sing, Some Cry by Ntozake Shange and Ifa Bayeza
The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub
Welcome to Night Vale by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor
Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler and Maira Kalman
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott
The City & the City by China Miéville
City of Light, City of Poison: Murder, Magic, and the First Police Chief of Paris by Holly Tucker
Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon
Fifty Fifty by James Patterson
Gone, Baby, Gone by Dennis Lehane
How Late It Was, How Late by James Kelman
In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware
Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
Life After Life by Jill McCorkle
Mirror Mirror by Gregory Maguire
Never Never by James Patterson
One Plus One by Jojo Moyes
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
Time After Time by Lisa Grunwald
Time and Time Again by Ben Elton
Two by Two by Nicholas Sparks
Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green
After the Last Border: Two Families and the Story of Refuge in America by Jessica Goudeau
American Dervish by Ayad Akhtar
The Arrival by Shaun Tan
The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu
Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue
The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henríquez
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen by Jose Antonio Vargas
Family Life by Akhil Sharma
A Free Life by Ha Jin
Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok
The Good Immigrant: 26 Writers Reflect on America by Nikesh Shukla
One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration, 1924-1965 by Jia Lynn Yang
Separated: Inside an American Tragedy by Jacob Soboroff
The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You by Dina Nayeri
We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo
An instant classic is any recent publication (within the last ten years or so) that you believe will become an enduring classic.
No, you don’t have to read an atlas for this category (though you could, if you really wanted to). Any book that includes maps, is about maps, or features maps as an integral part of the plot will satisfy this category.
The Dewey Decimal call number for Natural Sciences is 500. It includes subjects such as Astronomy, Physics, Chemistry, Earth Sciences, Paleontology, Biology, Botany and Zoology.
Over the Rainbow books exhibit commendable literary quality and significant authentic LGBTQIA+ content. The books are reviewed and annual lists compiled by the American Library Association’s Rainbow Roundtable. For a complete list of longlisted titles, please visit https://www.glbtrt.ala.org/overtherainbow/archives/category/final-bibliographies.
The Merriam-Webster online dictionary explains that the picaresque novel “centers around a wandering individual of low standing who happens into a series of adventures among people of various higher classes, often relying on his wits and a little dishonesty to get by.” Now doesn’t that sound like fun?
All My Friends are Going to be Strangers by Larry McMurtry
The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Baudolino by Umberto Eco
Candide by Voltaire
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
The History of Thomas Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding
Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
Rabbit, Run by John Updike
Ulysses by James Joyce
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
Ball of Fire: The Tumultuous Life and Comic Art of Lucille Ball by Stefan Kanfer
Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell
A Field Guide to Redheads by Elizabeth Graeber
If This was Happiness: A Biography of Rita Hayworth by Barbara Learning
My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
Red: A History of the Redhead by Jacky Colliss Harvey
The Roots of Desire: The Myth, Meaning, and Sexual Power of Red Hair by Marion Roach
The Rosie Project by Don Tillman
The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson
Anxious People by Fredrik Backman
The Cold Song by Linn Ullmann
Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist
Moonstone: The Boy Who Never Was by Sjón
My Cat Yugoslavia by Pajtim Statovci
My Friend Natalia by Laura Lindstedt
Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson
Purge by Sofi Oksanen
The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend by Katarina Bivald
Smilla’s Sense of Snow by Peter Høeg
True by Riikka Pulkkinen
Valerie, or, The Faculty of Dreams by Sara Stridsberg
We, the Drowned by Carsten Jensen
Woman at 1,000 Degrees by Hallgrímur Helgason
The Dewey Decimal call number for Social Sciences is 300. It includes subjects such as Social Groups, Culture & Institutions, Political Science, Civil Rights, Economics, Law, and Social Welfare.
America 1844: Religious Fervor, Westward Expansion, and the Presidential Election that Transformed the Nation by John Bicknell
As Big as the West: The Pioneer Life of Granville Stuart by Clyde A. Milner II
The Black West: A Documentary and Pictorial History of the African American Role in the Westward Expansion of the United States by William Loren Katz
The Children’s Blizzard by Melanie Benjamin
City of Rocks: A Western Story by Michael Zimmer
Earning the Rockies: How Geography Shapes America’s Role in the World by Robert D. Kaplan
The Hunger by Alma Katsu
Inland by Téa Obreht
Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power by Pekka Hämäläinen
Lions of the West: Heroes and Villains of the Westward Expansion by Robert Morgan
Manifest Destinies: American’s Westward Expansion and the Road to the Civil War by Steven E. Woodworth
New Women in the Old West: From Settlers to Suffragists, an Untold American Story by Winifred Gallagher
One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow by Olivia Hawker
The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West by David McCullough
The Removes by Tatjana Soli
Stranded: A Story of Frontier Survival by Matthew P. Mayo
Visit https://taleaway.com/category/books/ and chose a book set in a faraway place.