Pulitzer Prize Winning Fiction Project discussion

I just started this project and very excited. I am reading them in order from 1917 (Ernest Poole).

Welcome, Bisa.

I'm not going in any real order, but I am trying to pick a few off the earlier end. Right now I'm reading Booth Tarkington's The Magnificent Ambersons. Let us know what you think of the Poole book. I was thinking of asking for it through our interlibrary loan system.

I just joined this group. I haven't been able to find anyone in real life to join me on my journey to read all the Pulitzer fiction winners, so I was thrilled to find this group. I just started The March and am enjoying it. My name is Cindi - live in South Texas and am a widow raising two kids - one in high school, one in college, I manage a doctor's office. Reading keeps me sane.

Good to have you here, Cindi. What inspired you to start this project? Do you have any standout favorites yet?

Hi,

I am new to this as well. I have only read one so far - 1961 To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and am currently reading - 2003 Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides which I am really enjoying! Also I have 2007 The Road by Cormac McCarthy sat on my bookshelf in a queue! I am just going to try and slip a few Pulitzer winners in amoungst my reading so it will be slow gradual progress but here goes!...

Hi Nikki,

Welcome to this group. We're kind of quiet here, but it's good to know we have company out there. I just finished Middlesex, also. I notice you're in the discussion over at 1001 Books. I should take this opportunity to invite anyone else from this group who has read Middlesex to join us.

I just slip a few Pulitzers in my reading queue, also. It's nice when they turn up in the monthly book club.

That sounds neat, Julie. Maybe you could let us know which books your book club is reading. Then if any of us want to informally tag along, we can.

Bisa wrote: "I just started this project and very excited. I am reading them in order from 1917 (Ernest Poole)."

Denise wrote: "Welcome, Bisa.

I'm not going in any real order, but I am trying to pick a few off the earlier end. Right now I'm reading Booth Tarkington's The Magnificent Ambersons. Let us know what you thin..."

Bisa:
I just finished reading Ernest Poole's book a few days ago. See my review in the topic "I aim to read them in order..." It's a quick read, and I enjoyed it. Miraculously, my local library had it on the shelves. It's tough to find anywhere else.

Thanks for the link, Julie. I like book clubs. I'm in a couple here at Goodreads, and occassionally we read a Pulitzer winner. I've read about half of those on your list and would be very interested to hear which generate the best discussions for your group. I recently read Oscar Wao and really liked it. I only gave it 3 stars, but that's because I was in a harsh judging phase. It's really a good story.

I have had the Pulitzer Novel/Fiction Winners as a personal project for quite some time. I even got my best girlfriend hooked and I believe she may have just about finished ! I am going to take a few moments to compose my list of "already-read," but in the meantime I will continue with Oscar Wao which I am finding to be an explosive challenge given the spanish turns-of-phrase and edgy characters.

Hi Amy. I look forward to seeing your list of "already-read." Let us know what you think of Oscar Wao when you finish.

Good Morning, Denise. I have to tell you - the fact that I can share ideas, opinions, questions about books that I am enjoying with others of the same ilk without having to DRIVE anywhere (which, on certain days, is all that I seem to do) makes me quite happy !!! I am heading out the door - as we speak ;) - and I have Oscar in my bag !

Hello all! Just signed up here as well.

I started reading the Pulitzers purposefully last year. I was getting to where I was just reading new stuff and it was all basically the same genre. Since then I've been adding them into my reading list randomly and have read about 20. It is amazing how many excellent books I have read that I wouldn't have even given a chance before. (Like Lonesome Dove! It is one of the best books I've ever read. Pick it up NEXT!!)

I can't wait to hear all of your thoughts on these unexpected favorites!

Aja wrote: "Hello all! Just signed up here as well.

I started reading the Pulitzers purposefully last year. I was getting to where I was just reading new stuff and it was all basically the same genre. Si..."

Aja:

Nice to have you join. I agree that Lonesome Dove was a tremendous read...not JUST for the story line but for the authors ability to develop such rich and recognizable characters. It was truly a beautifully crafted work.

Aja, I second John's welcome. I have been meaning to read Lonesome Dove for awhile now, but I keep getting distracted by other things. Hopefully I'll get to it this year. I'm guessing I won't be disappointed.

Hi all! I am so glad to have found this group. This is very exciting. I try to alternate the "Pulitzers" with some great popular trade fiction on the NYTBSL.

Hi everyone

I just joined here. I've been trying to slowly read my way through the Pulitzer's. Right now I'm reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Looking forward to sharing with you all.

Lori

Hi Lori,

I look forward to hearing what you think. I just read Kavaier and Clay last fall. I liked it a lot.

I'm really excited to find this group! I got it into my head a few weeks ago to make a list of 100 books I've meant to read but never got around to (actual list has 162) and gave myself a deadline of 5 years.
I decided to include all the Pulitzer's (for fiction) and I haven't found anyone to share the experience with. Can't think of why not...:)
I was thinking I'd read them in order - but I'm not holding my breath about it!

I think this is a great group & I can't wait to start!

Erin

Hi everyone

Well, I finished Kavalier and Clay and enjoyed it, however, it was not my normal reading so I did have to take it a bit at a time. Definitely worth the read though,imho.

Erin~Welcome! Do you have any idea what you might start with?


Lori :)

Hello. My name is John; I live in Columbus, Ohio. I happened on this group with some surprise, for its members have undertaken a project that I, also, have started.

For me, reading all of the Pulitzer Prize-winners in the category of fiction happened quite by accident. Recently, I was perusing the list of said winners; in doing so, I discovered that I'd already read just over half of them. 'Well,' I thought, 'why not just continue on and read them all?'

The project is, for me, twofold: one, I enjoy reading and wouldn't know how to relax without it; two, I am a writer, and, as Faulkner said, a writer should read everything on which he is able to get his hands.

In the past month, I have finished 'A Death in the Family,' by James Agee; 'The Old Man and the Sea,' by Ernest Hemingway; 'The Bridge of San Luis Rey,' by Thornton Wilder; and 'Years of Grace,' by Margaret Ayer Barnes.

While I enjoyed them all, the novel by Mr. Agee is of particular note. Having lost a parent when I was a child, the story possessed an emotional wallop that I think I will never shake. Mr. Agee was, initially, a poet, the fact of which is clearly evident in his heartbreaking, eloquent prose. More than that, however, was this sobering truth: The man knew of what he wrote. In experiencing the story of the Follet family, there burgeoned from my memory certain moments and details of my own younger life. The story, strangely enough, is both tragic and hopeful, for it reveals to us that loss and death are never truly successful when such balms as love and memory may exist.

More on the others later...

Currently, I am reading 'Olive Kitteridge,' by Elizabeth Strout. I have been aware of Ms. Strout's writing for some time, though this is the first of it that I have read. I'm nearly halfway through and am enjoying it. True, Olive is a challenging character, but that's rather what I like about the work: It allows one a medium in which he or she may question and examine the myriad ways in which judgment and prejudice weave insidiously into one's thoughts.

Next on the docket is, I think, either MacKinlay Kantor's 'Andersonville'; or, maybe, one of the Tarkington novels. 'Laughing Boy' is also a possibility, and so is 'The Plague of Doves,' by Louise Erdrich. The latter, of course, was a finalist for the prize; however, I read the first ten pages of the novel and found myself instantly intrigued.

So, we'll see.

Good day to all.

I read 'Lonesome Dove' a few years ago, and I still think about it from time to time: the true sign of a great book.

And what a weird gestation the novel had! Its original origin was as a screenplay to be written for, if memory serves, James Stewart. But, as often happens in Tinseltown, the deal fell through, and Mr. McMurtry decided instead to write the story in novel form. Lucky for us that he did.

I have long admired Mr. McMurtry's work. He created my favorite female character in American fiction: Emma Greenway Horton. After reading 'Lonesome Dove' (one of those rare novels one is sad to reach the end of), I found myself adding Augustus Mcrae to my list of the most beloved characters in fiction.

For those of you who are not terribly enlivened by the idea of reading a western, I am pleased to let you know that 'Lonesome Dove' is not a novel to which that category readily applies. I think of the novel as 'taking place' in the western milieu, though it is not restricted to or by the demarcated lines of said genre.

I passed many, many a pleasant night with the characters of the novel, and even found myself, at times, so moved by the story that I had to set the book aside from time to time just so I could absorb it in reverent silence.

You won't get any concrete plot details on this one from me; one should approach the world Mr. McMurtry so vividly brings to life with a complete, unmarked innocence... and a total surrender.
John wrote: "Aja wrote: "Hello all! Just signed up here as well.

I started reading the Pulitzers purposefully last year. I was getting to where I was just reading new stuff and it was all basically the sam..."

Hello John. Sounds your cruising through the list. I keep meaning to read Lonsesome Dove, and keep not doing it. I'v let myself be distracted by various bookclubs I'm in.

Hello, Denise.

You know, it took me some time to finally buckle down and read Lonesome Dove, too. My initial attempt occurred years ago, while I was convalescing from an illness. I was suffering from an impacted wisdom tooth, which ruptured and sent infection throughout my body. It left me down for two weeks. Looking back on it, it wasn't an ideal time, really, in which to read anything. There was also the daunting element of the novel's length. But years later, when again I picked up the novel and started it, I just went right through it.

As I've grown older, I've found it unnecessary to be daunted by a novel's length. It means more story, which is never truly a bad thing, is it, for one who loves to read? Especially when the story is written so well, as is the case with Lonesome Dove, and as is also the case with The Executioner's Song.

I know a lot of people who have been put off, in addition to Lonesome Dove, by the length of Mr. Mailer's true-life novel. They needn't be. Instead of focusing on length and worrying about the time they will need to invest, readers would do well to focus on the beauty of language and the execution - no pun intended - of the story.

It's something I learned from one of my high school English teachers. "If you see reading as some kind of task or chore," she told us, "then you're completely missing the point of why you should be reading in the first place." She spoke, too, of how people should allow themselves the pleasure of the experience. Reading, in her estimation, is kind of like having a private movie theater in one's mind. The parade of images, characters, incidents. Guided by the author's words, we become more engaged with our own imaginations, and find our own points of view challenged, vindicated, sometimes even changed.

"When you finish a great book," our teacher said, "you're never quite the same person you were before you read it."

This is what I think now whenever I begin to read a novel, and it never ceases to excite or fascniate me - the privilege of regarding this world in which we live from a perspective that is not specifically our own. That's what great art does, whether it be etched on a page, a canvas, the notes of an instrument, or on celluloid.








Denise wrote: "Hello John. Sounds your cruising through the list. I keep meaning to read Lonsesome Dove, and keep not doing it. I'v let myself be distracted by various bookclubs I'm in."

John,

What a lovely stated appreciation for the arts.

Lonesome Dove is easy to come by in used bookstores and that is my current approach to picking which pulitzer I intend to read next. I probably do lean to the shorter ones, but that works out nicely sometimes, too. Most recently I read Ironweed, which I'd never been particularly curious about. As it turns out, I liked it quite a bit.

In the next six months one of my book clubs will be reading War and Peace and The Name of the Rose among other titles. Both of those seem like reading commitments that don't leave a lot time for other novels. I may find it hard to keep to my easy goal of reading 6 pulitzer titles per year.

Denise,

Ironweed is one of my favorite novels. I read it during my junior year of high school, and even all these years later, I still think about it. Francis, Helen, and Rudy are such wonderful characters. So vibrant and humane. Despite the the desultory depths into which their lives have fallen, each retains his or her dignity and presses forth as best he or she can.

The passage in which Helen recalls her love of music remains one of my favorites in any novel. And the quiet hope of the final sentence, the sense of a lost soul finally returning home, to be welcomed back in the bosom of family, is so simply and truthfully rendered as to elicit tears.

Have you seen Hector Babenco's film? It's very faithful to the novel, and sports one of Jack Nicholson's finest performances. And Meryl Streep as Helen! Helen in the film was just as I had envisioned her in the novel. It happens rarely, but now and then I will see a film based on something I've read and a character will come to me in this way. (It happened for me, too, in The World According to Garp. Glenn Close was Jenny Fields.)

As I understand it, Ms. Streep based Helen on the treble clef note - in posture, intonation, mood. You can see it in the film. Such flawless execution. And we even get to see William Kennedy in the film! He is the man whom Helen kisses during the scene in which she sings He's Me Pal. You could see on his face the wonder and joy of watching Ms. Streep bring one of his greatest characters to full-throated, breathing life.

Ironweed: A novel I cannot recommend enough.

As for War and Peace: You are in for a real treat. One hears of that novel and is perhaps daunted by it. But there's no need to be. It's just a treasure of great writing, characters, and just about any theme that has ever been invented. I've not read any Umberto Ecco. I understand he's a very good writer, but I've just not gotten around to reading him. Perhaps I'll remedy that someday.

John


Denise wrote: "John,

What a lovely stated appreciation for the arts.

Lonesome Dove is easy to come by in used bookstores and that is my current approach to picking which pulitzer I intend to read next. I p..."