Sunday, February 25, 2018

The Pulitzer Challenge

I'm retiring after 30 years on the job this week and I decided I need an intellectual challenge to defrag my brain.  The past few years I have read regency fan-fiction of the Darcy and Elizabeth variety almost exclusively.  Now that I will have some extra time on my hands, I declare my days of purely escapist literature are hereby over.

I think if I were to jump straight into Plato, my big plans would curl up and die in short order.  I need to build up my attention span, and what better place to start then the Pulitzer Prize winners for fiction?  There are 90 winners to date, and we own well over half of the titles already.  I have read about 16 of them in the past, and they were all solid reads.  (In comparison, I have read a number of the Mann Booker prize winners, and a few were really out there!)  I am planning to read the Pulitzer's in order by prize year, re-reading the ones I have read previously.

I will be ranking the winners in various, still to be determined, categories like most enjoyable, easy to read, best characterization, best plot, etc.  I am also planning to write a short review of each book as I finish reading it.  I have already finished the first winner, His Family by Ernest Poole, which won the prize in 1918, and I will post a review on it this week.

I am looking forward to getting deeper into this challenge, and welcome anyone who wants to join me on my journey.

1 comment:

Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington - 1922

Booth Tarkington won a second time with Alice Adams in 1922.  Alice Adams is another highly class conscious tale in which the title charac...