Read your way around the USA

Thanks for thoughts BasketzatDawn on Scotland. We'll need to divide the country up. Looking forward to Torvill n Dean in Notts!

So CORNWALL is sorted.

DEVON Treasure Island opens in Barnstaple - do we think there is enough of the book 'set there' to warrant inclusion? Thoughts , please.

So can peeps please to choose from the following:

-And then there were none by Agatha Christie (island off Devon)
-Green Smoke by Rosemary Manning
-The Hound of the Baskervilles
-Lorna Doone
-War Horse
-Tarka the Otter

(to keep things easy, please prefix your post with DEVON)

Have read 17 and seen films of a couple more. Great list! Now we could do a UK one but that would be tough!

South Yourkshire - Sheffield, The Northern Clemency

ENGLAND

• - - - - - - - - -

WALES

• - - - - - - - - -

SCOTLAND

• - - - - - - - - -

NORTHERN IRELAND

• - - - - - - - - -

Humpday That's why I just listed some authors above. I could not figure out how to assign books by county in Scotland.

Oh, Alan Sillitoe's a much better choice than Lawrence.

There's Orkney by Amy Sackville, if that helps for Scotland.

Robin Jenkins, Janice Galloway, James Kelman, Robert Louis Stevenson, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, James Robertson

We'll need more for Scotland than just WS and Skye. It's a very diverse place. i'll have a think .... . Anything that's not crime? Of course there is ....

In fact, a quick google of famous Nottingham books has brought me to Torvill and Dean: The Autobiography of Ice Dancing's Greatest Stars by Jayne Torvill.

I like Jayne Torvill, she looks nowhere near as depressing as Lawrence and his miserable, exposed men.

I've been looking into NOTTINGHAM but realise I'm getting ahead of myself.

But apparently The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner is set there. That's famous. It was mentioned in our pub quiz. You don't get more famous than that.

There's got to be something about Robin Hood as well, or there's something very wrong with the world.

Anything but Lawrence and the misery he inflicted on my English Lit class for months with that son and his godawful mother.

Green Smoke by Rosemary Manning

Oh yes, that's why I had to visit Kynance Cove.

DEVON: Doesn't Treasure Island start in Devon?

Also Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, which is apparently her bestselling book with over 100,000,000 copies sold and one of the biggest selling books of all time (although I suspect the poster in the library that told me so was printed before the 50 Shades boom, so it might be out of date by now

Fab suggestions SarahandFuck. So, it looks like we may have found our first 'Most famous Book' Jamaica Inn for CORNWALL? Who would like to start us of for DEVON? The Hound of the Baskervilles or Lorna Doone or War Horse or Tarka the Otter or... or...??
Please suggest your faves, starting the message with DEVON. Thanks everyone, this will such an interesting project!

It sounds like a great way to start.

CORNWALL: I don't think we can go wrong with the du Maurier suggestions, so I second Jamaica Inn, but it can't hurt to have a back-up and I've never read The Shell Seekers.

And if nobody minds, I'm going to suggest something for younger readers as well, because they are still books that I enjoy now.

CORNWALL: Green Smoke by Rosemary Manning (and the others in the Dragon series that follow it. DS loves these books. And a couple of books in The Dark Is Rising series by Susan Cooper are set in Cornwall too. They are for older children/teens and Over Sea, Under Stone, which starts the series, and Green Witch, which is the third book in the series, are set there.

CORNWALL: Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier or The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher?

Ok everyone, doing a UK version looks as though this could fly? Some great suggestions coming in already! I am happy to collate and put the final choices on the final map. The American one is titled "The Most Famous Book" which we could do by county. So how would you feel if we start with one county, say, - Cornwall - and see what comes in and choose the novel with the most suggestions? If you are up for this, please start your message with CORNWALL and then add your book so it is easy to spot... Ebearhug has already suggested Daphne Du Maurier but which one ? (and I am sure we can find something other than DH Lawrence for Notts, ScarerAndFuck!!....) Over to you folks! (Does that sound like a good way to start??)

Or Ian Rankin for Edinburgh.

Scones, I've never actually read Walter Scott, so that's why I was a bit vague. If we give him the Borders, we could have Irvine Welsh for Edinburgh.

Scarer, that's rather how I feel about Hardy. I suspect people may feel that way about the Brontes in Yorkshire, too.

Walter Scott for somewhere Scottish? Hmm, that would be Edinburgh and the Borders.

Wow, thanks for posting this.

See you all in a few months then ??