Ok, I know that the routes our books take sometimes defies all logic and reason (for example all my books leave my home in Western Colorado and go East to Denver first....even if the ulitmate destination is West) but this beats all.

I sent out a book that is supposed to go to Nevada.    I use DC and just checked on it....It went to California and then to Maryland.

Am I missing something? 

This is quite common, stupid but common. I have one right now that started out 20 miles from me and is now in Wisconsin 125 miles from me, will probably get it sometime next week when I could have had it yesterday.

I live in MD.  I mailed a game book to CT which is a day's drive.  When it hadn't arrived after 3 wks I took a look: they had sent to Illinois.  Not a huge detour but still.

I've sent stuff from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania by way of California before.  It seems to happen quite a bit.

I live in Northern California and was once sent a book from someone in Southern California and it went through Michigan before it came to me.

Wow, that seems pretty inefficient. I can't even see a reason for sending mail across the country for no reason. No wonder mail gets lost so often and takes so long to be delivered. Does this just happen with media mail or with first class also?

I think most of the time it's human error.  Books aren't scanned at every stop they make. Sometimes they aren't scanned at all.  I think these books that take the detours are just put in the wrong bin by the postal employee. THey look really quick and mistake the state.  A bin for one region accidentally gets put on the wrong truck,  they get disctracted and then toss it in the wrong bin.  Then your book takes a tour of the US.