Having finished and reviewed my second National Book Award winner, I have now completed the 2012 Battle of the Prizes, American Version . ...

  There's a reason why Mr. Sammler's Planet doesn't spring first to mind when making a list of favorite or best known Saul Be...

No one can strip a marriage down to find the twinging nerve like Wallace Stegner , but he does it with such a deft and gentle touch that ...

I finished the 2011 Battle of the Prizes, American Version (click here for the 2012 challenge).  The challenge runs through January 31, 20...

Thomas Williams won the 1975 National Book Award for The Hair of Harold Roux , a novel within a novel about balancing a writer's crea...

2012 will be the fourth year I've hosted this Battle of the Prizes Challenge here at Rose City Reader. This challenge pits winners of...

Aaron Benham sits at his desk hearing the wrong voices.  -- The Hair of Harold Roux by Thomas Williams. This was the 1975 winner of the ...

  Charles Frazier won the National Book Award for Cold Mountain , his Civil war novel about a Confederate deserter and the woman waiting ...

"At the first gesture of morning, flies began stirring." -- Cold Mountain by Charles Frasier. This has been sitting on my T...

I could have guessed before starting Breathing Lessons that the book would involve an ordinary family in Baltimore facing problems in an...

This challenge pits winners of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction against the winners of the National Book Award in the American Version of the...

The 2010 Battle of the Prizes, American Version, ends on January 31, 2011.  The 2011 challenge starts February 1. Thanks to everyone who ...

Lord of Misrule is Jaimy Gordon's back-of-the-house view of small track horse racing. It is not a pretty view – everything is crooked...

It is a new year, and time to assess my reading progress for the year just closed and make plans for 2011. This is the third of my quarte...

    Let the Great World Spin is a collection of short stories that form a novel centered around Philippe Petit’s 1974 high wire act betwe...

Olive Kitteridge is Elizabeth Strout’s collection of short-stories-as-novel that won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize. The stories are set in the...

"Those who saw him hushed." -- Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann. This won the National Book Award last year. I am...

First: the July issue of the Internet Review of Books is up now in time to impart some summer reading inspiration.  There are ten non-fict...

Congratulations to Caitlin at chaotic compendiums for being the first participant to complete the 2010 Battle of the Prizes, American Ver...

This challenge pits winners of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction against the winners of the National Book Award in the American Version of the...