I’m about to read Massachusetts, and I’m overwhelmed by the possibilities

I finished Maryland on my reading tour of the US — three books set in each state and written by an author from that state — and as I do every time I finish a state, as soon as I finished Maryland, I made a list of books from the next state I plan to read.

My list for Massachusetts is 14 books long. All of them look compelling. Several of them I am excited about. Many have been on my life-long To Read list. All of them meet my criteria of being set in Massachusetts and written by an author who was either born there ore lived a significant amount of time there (except The Crucible — Arthur Miller only travelled to Salem for research, he did not live there. So I guess that helps me eliminate one from my list).

I’ve read several of these. I read them long ago, though, and I kind of wanted to revisit them. With so many other options of new books to read, I don’t think I’ll be doing any re-reading, though.

I’m going to read Judith Guest’s Ordinary People while I decide. If you have any strong recommendations from this list, please let me know.

• The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin
• Secret Harmonies by Andrea Barrett
• Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman
• The Widower’s Tale by Julia Glass
• The Crucible by Arthur Miller
• The Wapshot Chronicle by John Cheever
• The Wedding by Dorothy West
• The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O’Connor
• Walden by Henry David Thoreau (read a long time ago)
• The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (read in recent years)
• The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne (read in recent years)
• The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (read in high school; I wrote a paper on it: the first piece of writing I was proud of)
• Moby Dick by Herman Melville (read in recent years)

I think I’ve got the list narrowed to five, but I’m curious to hear from folks who’ve read any of these. Thank you!