- How many 2025 Great Reads titles can you read? (Print this checklist to track how many 2025 Great Reads titles can you have read!)
Great Reads from Great Places
The Great Reads from Great Places: Roadmap to Reading is a program of the Library of Congress and is administered through the Affiliate Centers for the Book in each state and jurisdiction. Humanities Montana is home to the Montana Center for the Book. Each year, the affiliate centers for the book select an adult and a youth title to represent their state at the National Book Festival. The chosen titles celebrate the unique literary heritage of the state.
2026 Great Reads Selections
Nicholas Triolo is an author, editor, and educator living in Missoula, Montana. Triolo has worked in publishing for over ten years—editor-in-chief, Camas; digital strategist, Orion; senior editor, Outside/Trail Runner; managing editor, Magic Canoe. He’s taught place-based writing for the University of Montana, Yale/Oxford Academia, Wild Rockies Field Institute, Writing the Wild, Freeflow Institute, and the Missoula Writing Collaborative. Triolo’s work has been featured in Orion, Emergence, Dark Mountain Project, Outside, Terrain.org, and others. His book, The Way Around, was published by Milkweed Editions in July 2025, and has been featured in People, Longreads, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Read more on his newsletter, “The Jasmine Dialogues.”
Adult Selection: The Way Around: A Field Guide to Going Nowhere by Nicholas Triolo
Nicholas Triolo’s The Way Around is a memoir that explores place, belonging, and the search for meaning beyond achievement. Through pilgrimages around sacred and significant landscapes—including Tibet’s Mount Kailash, California’s Mount Tamalpais, and Montana’s Berkeley Pit—Triolo reflects on community, memory, and what it means to find home. Blending personal narrative with cultural history, The Way Around offers a thoughtful meditation on connection, purpose, and the landscapes that shape us.
Previous Great Reads Adult Selections:
Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, Robin spent countless hours riding her pony, or with a book (you guessed it—a horse book!), always with her faithful dog by her side. Her passion for horses grew from that first pony to working in show stables, to breeding and training her own foals. Robin holds degrees in English, Geology, and Anthropology, and lives in Western Montana where she and her husband raised two spirited daughters riding horses of their own. She has served as both a teacher and a riding instructor. These days, in addition to writing and reading, you can find Robin hiking with her Australian Shepherds, shooting a traditional bow, or baking horse-shaped cookies.
Youth Selection: Galloping Away by Robin Kolb
Galloping Away by Robin Kolb is a heartwarming contemporary horse story about families, animals, and resilience. Alex learns to never give up as she works toward her dream of competing on a horse of her own. She also realizes what love and hope look like – and it’s not always what she thought. Winner of the Readers Favorite 5 Star Review and the ABC Book Award Honorable Mention!
Previous Great Reads Youth Selections:
Great Reads FAQs
Each fall, Humanities Montana sends out a call for nominations to the general public, educators, librarians, schools, book clubs, and other partners. The call is based on criteria for the Great Reads program. Humanities Montana staff researches all nominations to make sure they fit the established criteria. Then the selection committee, made up of librarians and Humanities Montana staff, narrows the nomination pool to a short list of titles for review and discussion.
The 56 affiliated Centers for the Book of the Library of Congress choose books, called Great Reads, that will be recognized each year at the Library of Congress National Book Festival. Every year since 2002, each of these Library affiliates have chosen a youth and an adult title to celebrate at the Book Festival in the Library’s Roadmap to Reading – a vast space at the festival where every center has a table to promote their book choices as well as other aspects of their state’s or territory’s unique literary heritage.
Titles are evaluated on: a strong Montana connection, creative and educational merit, relevancy to a broad audience, and availability.
Note: Self-published titles are not qualified for consideration according to the Library of Congress guidelines.
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