Favorite Books -- BOOK THOUGHTS

 

BOOK THOUGHTS

Favorite Books

Here are two dozen of my favorite books. Think of this as a sort of Meet the Book Blogger post. I pulled these favorite fiction and favorite nonfiction books off my shelves to illustrate the types of books I like to read. They aren't my favorite books of all times, but they are favorites that I've kept around. All have survived several shelf purges, proving they really are favorite books. 

One thing you can tell from these favorites is I don't run out to read the latest book. My TBR shelves overflow with dated popular fiction, "modern" classics from the 20th Century, and books that were never popular but caught my eye. I read a lot of crime fiction and dabble with a few romance novels now and again, but there are several genres I rarely, if ever, read, like sci-fi, fantasy, erotica, and horror. 

As for nonfiction, I love food writing, travel writing of the expat memoir variety, biographies of Midcentury socialites (there's a sub-genre for you!), style guides (as in writing style, not clothes), coffee table books about home decorating, and books about books.   

Do we share any tastes in books? Here are some of my favorites.

 FAVORITE FICTION

📗 The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch

📗 Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane

📗 The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark

📗 Independence Day by Richard Ford

📗 Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

📗 Play It as It Lays by Joan Didion

📗 Mating by Norman Rush

📗 Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey

📗 Transcription by Kate Atkinson

📗 Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis

📗 Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding

📗 American Tabloid by James Ellroy

FAVORITE NONFICTION

📘 Merry Hall by Beverley Nichols

📘 The Library Book by Susan Orlean

📘 Wait for Me! By Deborah Mitford

📘 The King’s English: A Guide to Modern Usage by Kingsley Amis

📘 Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose by Flannery O’Connor

📘 Up in the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell

📘 My Life in France by Julia Child

📘 The Food of France by Waverley Root

📘 Eats Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss

📘 The Kingmaker: Pamela Harriman’s Astonishing Life of Power, Seduction, and Intrigue by Sonia Purnell

📘 Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government by P.J. O’Rourke

Have you read any of these? Would you?

Dragon's Teeth by Upton Sinclair -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Dragon's Teeth by Upton Sinclair

Thank you for joining me for Book Beginnings on Fridays. Please share the opening sentence (or so) of the book you are reading this week. You can also share from a book that caught your fancy, even if you are not reading it right now.

MY BOOK BEGINNING

Lanny Budd was the only occupant of a small-sized reception-room. He was seated in a well-padded armchair, and had every reason to be comfortable, but did not appear so.

-- from Dragon's Teeth by Upton Sinclair. 

Upton Sinclair won the 1943 Pulitzer Prize for Dragon's Teeth, a chunky novel set in the 1930s in the lead up to WWII.  It is the third book in his "World's End" series featuring Lanny Budd, American playboy and son of an international arms dealer. I'm reading it because I'm working my way through all the Pulitzer Prize winners. It is one of my picks for the Classics Club. 

The story is dense with family matters (Lanny and his rich wife just had their first baby), high class living (yachts, the Riviera, mansions, Long Island, fancy parties, servants, etc.), social history (the Great Depression, the rise of Hitler), and politics (revolutionaries, reactionaries, Pinks, Reds, and Fascists). I expected it to be entertaining, in the way I love about shaggy novels written in the mid-1900s. I didn't expect it to feel so current. But the themes and conflicts of the 1930s seem very on-point to the issues of today. I' getting a lot of insight from it and think it deserves a bigger audience.  

See the Publisher's Description below for more details. 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please add the link to your Book Beginnings post in the box below. If you share on social media, please use the #bookbeginnings hashtag.

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THE FRIDAY 56

The Friday 56 is a natural tie-in with Book Beginnings. The idea is to share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of your featured book. If you are reading an ebook or audiobook, find your teaser from the 56% mark.

Freda at Freda's Voice started and hosted The Friday 56 for a long, long time. She is taking a break and Anne at My Head is Full of Books has taken on hosting duties in her absence. Please visit Anne's blog and link to your Friday 56 post.

MY FRIDAY 56

-- from Dragon's Teeth:

I am to fly and join the yacht at Lisbon, and as soon as I can set a date, I will telegraph you. In the meantime, say nothing, and my father and I will be the only persons in the secret.

FROM THE PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

In the wake of the 1929 stock market crash, Lanny Budd’s financial acumen and his marriage into great wealth enable him to continue the lifestyle he has always enjoyed. But the devastation the collapse has wrought on ordinary citizens has only strengthened Lanny’s socialist ideals—much to the chagrin of his heiress wife, Irma, a confirmed capitalist.

* * * 

Winner of the 1943 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Dragon’s Teeth brilliantly captures the nightmarish march toward the Second World War. An astonishing mix of history, adventure, and romance, the Lanny Budd Novels are a testament to the breathtaking scope of Upton Sinclair’s vision and his singular talents as a storyteller.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

How is your week going? If you celebrated Easter, I hope you had a good one. I hosted at my house with my family and a few friends and we had a lovely time. The next day was my husband's birthday, so I took the day off work to celebrate with him, which made for a wonderful long weekend. 

Now that work is finally slowing down, I hope to have more time for blogging, including hopping around to visit more of your Book Beginning posts! I look forward to seeing the opening sentences (or so) of the books you are reading this week. As always, feel free to share a book that caught your fancy instead of a book you are reading right now. 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

In later years, holding forth to an interviewer or to an audience of aging fans at a comic book convention, Sam Clay liked to declare, apropos of his and Joe Kavalier’s greatest creation, that back when he was a boy, sealed and hog-tied inside the airtight vessel known as Brooklyn, New York, he had been haunted by dreams of Harry Houdini.

-- The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon. AAOK&C has been on my TBR shelf for many years. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 and everyone I know who read it liked it. But I've never gotten around to reading it.  

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please add the link to your Book Beginning post in the Linky box below. If you share on social media, please use the hashtag #bookbeginnings. 

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THE FRIDAY 56

Another fun Friday event is The Friday 56. Share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of your book, or 56% of the way through your e-book or audiobook, on this weekly event hosted by Freda at Freda's Voice.

MY FRIDAY 56

From Amazing Adventures:

Two weeks after Josef’s disaster, with Thomas recovered, Kornblum called at the flat off the Graben to escort the Kavalier brothers to dinner at the Hofzinser Club. It proved to be a quite ordinary place, with a cramped, dimly lit dining room that smelled of liver and onions.

I like this book a lot so far. I'm about a quarter of the way through. It's a sprawling story about two cousins in New York during WWII who team up to create a comic book series. I've only gotten through the part of how the one cousin, Josef Kavalier, escapes Nazi-occupied Prague to get to America where he is now living with his younger cousin, Sam Clayman. 

My sister, me, and my mom on Easter. Because what better way to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord than with matching bunny sweaters? 

Monthly Wrap Up -- My November Books

 

MONTHLY WRAP UP

I got so caught up in Christmas prep that I forgot to post my monthly wrap up of the books I read in November. Doesn’t it feel like the last weeks of the year race by?  Between end-of-year work stuff and holiday festivities, I don’t know where my head is half the time.

MY NOVEMBER BOOKS

I read 13 books in November, including four for Nonfiction November. I love these theme reads that seem more popular with the the boom of bookstagram.

In the order I read them, not the order they are in the picture:

The Incredulity of Father Brown by G.K. Chesterton. I’m working my way through all the stories. This one isn't in the picture at all because I read it with my ears. 🌹🌹🌹🌹

Funerals are Fatal by Agatha Christie, the first of three Christie books I read in November just because I was in the mood. 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

French Lessons by Ellen Sussman, one from my French Connections list and a fun trip to Paris! 🌹🌹🌹🌹

Vol. 71 of Slightly Foxed from Foxed Quarterly, the Autumn 2021 edition. I count it as a “book” so I can keep track of which ones I read. 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

Rizzio, the new historical fiction novella by Denise Mina from Pegasus Books was an excellent way to spend a stormy afternoon. Great read! 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

Cat Among the Pigeons by Agatha Christie 🌹🌹🌹🌹

House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday, which won the 1969 Pulitzer Prize. I wanted to like it more than I did, but the stream of consciousness, multiple narrators, and multiple narrative voices (including the always confusing second person) made it a difficult book to engage with. 🌹🌹🌹

Peril at End House by Agatha Christie 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

Past Tense by Lee Child. I have one more to go before I finish all the Jack Reacher books written by Lee Child (without his brother as co-author). Fine with me. I was an ardent fan, but I’m off them.🌹🌹🌹🌹

Walden by Henry David Thoreau. I finally read this classic about living in the woods and can check it off my list! 🌹🌹🌹🌹

The French Chef in America: Julia Child's Second Act by Alex Prud'homme. If you want more of My Life in France, this is the book for you. I loved it.  🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

March Violets by Philip Kerr. This is the first book in his Bernie Gunther series and I’ll definitely stick with it. 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

Plum Sauce: A P.G. Wodehouse Companion by Richard Usborne is a deep dive into Wodehouse’s 97 books. 🌹🌹🌹🌹

Also in the picture are the white camellias that bloom in my yard from November through Christmas. 

 

Book Beginning: The Overstory by Richard Powers

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS
THANKS FOR JOINING ME ON FRIDAYS FOR BOOK BEGINNING FUN!

MY BOOK BEGINNING

Now is the time of chestnuts.

-- The Overstory by Richard Powers. I love this book so far, although I am only about four hours into a 24 hour audiobook. I heard some people complain it was dreamy and slow and I do not find it that way at all. So far, it has plenty of story enough for me. Each chapter has been like a separate short story introducing a new character. I understand from the book description that they are all going to connect in some way.

The Overstory won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. I'm trying to read all the Pulitzer fiction winners, which is why I'm reading this, but I am glad I am.

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author’s name.

EARLY BIRDS & SLOWPOKES: This weekly post goes up Thursday evening for those who like to get their posts up and linked early on. But feel free to add a link all week.

SOCIAL MEDIA: If you are on Twitter, Instagram, or other social media, please post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I try to follow all Book Beginnings participants on whatever interweb sites you are on, so please let me know if I have missed any and I will catch up. Please find me on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING




TIE IN: The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice is a natural tie in with this event and there is a lot of cross over, so many people combine the two. The idea is to post a teaser from page 56 of the book you are reading and share a link to your post. Find details and the Linky for your Friday 56 post on Freda’s Voice.

MY FRIDAY 56

Jean takes her brothers into the forest preserve. There, the three of them hold the service their father won't allow.

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction Winners -- BOOK LIST

THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION

The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (formerly called the Prize for the Novel) has been awarded since 1918 for distinguished works of fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life.

The prize is named after its founder, legendary American publisher Joseph Pulitzer. No prize was awarded in several years, most recently in 2012. The prize is currently $15,000.

This is one of my favorite books lists, but I am not going to update the winners after 2021. My enthusiasm for prize-winners is waning with the 2020s. I may focus my efforts on reading the winners up to 2020 then declare victory and move on to other bookish projects.

So far, I've read 68 of the winners. The list of the winners through 2021 is below, with notes about whether I've read it, it is currently on my TBR shelf, or if it is available as an audiobook from my library.

The Prize winners since 1918 are:

2021: The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich ON OVERDRIVE

2020: The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead FINISHED

 
2019: The Overstory by Richard Powers FINISHED

2018: Less by Andrew Sean Greer FINISHED

2017: The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead FINISHED

2016: The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen FINISHED

2015: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doer FINISHED

2014: The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt FINISHED

2013: The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson FINISHED

2011: A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan FINISHED

2010: Tinkers by Paul Harding (reviewed here) FINISHED

2009: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (reviewed here) FINISHED

2008: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz FINISHED

2007: The Road by Cormack McCarthy

2006: March by Geraldine Brooks (reviewed here) FINISHED

2005: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (reviewed here) FINISHED

2004: The Known World by Edward P. Jones FINISHED

2003: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides  FINISHED

2002: Empire Falls by Richard Russo (reviewed here) FINISHED

2001: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon FINISHED

2000: Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri FINISHED

1999: The Hours by Michael Cunningham FINISHED

1998: American Pastoral by Philip Roth FINISHED

1997: Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser (reviewed here) FINISHED

1996: Independence Day by Richard Ford FINISHED

1995: The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields FINISHED

1994: The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx FINISHED

1993: A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler TBR SHELF

1992: A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley FINISHED

1991: Rabbit at Rest by John Updike FINISHED

1990: The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos FINISHED

1989: Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler (reviewed here) FINISHED

1988: Beloved by Toni Morrison FINISHED

1987: A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor (short review here) FINISHED

1986: Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry FINISHED

1985: Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie FINISHED

1984: Ironweed by William Kennedy FINISHED

1983: The Color Purple by Alice Walker FINISHED

1982: Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike FINISHED

1981: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy O'Toole FINISHED

1980: The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer ON OVERDRIVE

1979: The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever (reviewed here) FINISHED

1978: Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson TBR SHELF

1976: Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow (reviewed here) FINISHED

1975: The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara ON OVERDRIVE

1973: The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty TBR SHELF

1972: Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner FINISHED

1970: Collected Stories by Jean Stafford

1969: House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday FINISHED

1968: The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron FINISHED

1967: The Fixer by Bernard Malamud (reviewed here) FINISHED

1966: Collected Stories by Katherine Anne Porter

1965: The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau FINISHED

1963: The Reivers by William Faulkner TBR SHELF

1962: The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O'Connor

1961: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee FINISHED

1960: Advise and Consent by Allen Drury (reviewed here) FINISHED

1959: The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor FINISHED

1958: A Death in the Family by James Agee FINISHED

1956: Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor

1955: A Fable by William Faulkner

1953: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway FINISHED

1952: The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk ON OVERDRIVE

1951: The Town by Conrad Richter 

1950: The Way West by A. B. Guthrie, Jr.

1949: Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens FINISHED

1948: Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener FINISHED

1947: All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (reviewed here) FINISHED

1945: A Bell for Adano by John Hersey (reviewed here) FINISHED

1944: Journey in the Dark by Martin Flavin TBR SHELF

1943: Dragon's Teeth by Upton Sinclair FINISHED

1942: In This Our Life by Ellen Glasgow

1940: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck FINISHED

1939: The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

1938: The Late George Apley by John Phillips Marquand FINISHED

1937: Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell FINISHED

1936: Honey in the Horn by Harold L. Davis TBR SHELF

1935: Now in November by Josephine Winslow Johnson FINISHED

1934: Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Miller

1933: The Store by T. S. Stribling TBR SHELF

1932: The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck FINISHED

1931: Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes TBR SHELF

1930: Laughing Boy by Oliver Lafarge TBR SHELF

1929: Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin

1928: The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder FINISHED

1927: Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield FINISHED

1926: Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis FINISHED

1925: So Big by Edna Ferber FINISHED

1924: The Able McLaughlins by Margaret Wilson

1923: One of Ours by Willa Cather FINISHED

1922: Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington (reviewed here) FINISHED

1921: The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton FINISHED

1919: The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington FINISHED

1918: His Family by Ernest Poole


NOTE

Updated July 3, 2025. 

OTHERS READING THE PULITZER WINNERS

If you are working on reading all the Pulitzer fiction winners and want to list your blog or related link here, please leave a comment with the link and I will add it.

Teaser Tuesday: Lila by Marilynne Robinson

He said, "so, then, you've decided to stay."

"I never did plan on leaving."

-- Lila by Marilynne Robinson. Lila is one of the three books in Robinson's Gilead trilogy, along with Home (winner of the Orange Prize, now Baileys Prize) and Gilead (winner of the Pulitzer Prize).

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by The Purple Booker, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Review: Honey in the Horn by H. L. Davis

There was a run-down old tollbridge station in the Shoestring Valley of Southern Oregon where Uncle Preston Shiveley had lived for fifty years, outlasting a wife, two sons, several plagues of grasshoppers, wheat-rust and caterpillars, a couple or three invasions of land-hunting settlers and real-estate speculators, and everybody else except the scattering of old pioneers who had cockleburred themselves onto the country at about the same time he did.

Honey in the Horn starts off with this shaggy, homespun sentence that sets the tone for the whole pioneer-themed story. H. L. Davis's classic coming-of-age novel about homesteading in Oregon in the early 1900s has charm enough to still win over readers with its continuous movement and steady introduction of quirky characters.

The story follows orphan Clay Calvert on a series of adventures around Oregon, from his first job on a sheep ranch, through the forests of the rain-sodden Columbia Gorge, to high deserts and wheat fields east of the Cascade Mountains. Davis celebrates the beauty of the Pacific Northwest and the diversity of her citizens and settlers.

Honey in the Horn won the 1936 Pulitzer Prize -- the only Pulitzer for an Oregon novel. Some of its social views don’t fly today, but it captures the pioneering spirit and history of its time. The new reprint edition from OSU Press features an introduction by Richard W. Etulain.

TBT: Review: The Stories of John Cheever

Throw Back Thursday

This review was first posted on March 24, 2008

Before there was Mad Men, there was John Cheever.

The Stories of John Cheever, which won the National Book Critics Circle award in 1978 and the Pulitzer in 1979, is a chronological collection that spans Cheever’s short story career, from pre-WWII up to 1973. To read this collection – just shy of 700 pages – is to live in Cheever’s head, tracking his artistic and personal development in a way that a single novel or volume of stories doesn’t allow.

These are not happy stories. The earlier pieces are particularly bleak and raw. While the later stories are deeper and more nuanced, they are still pretty dark. Precious few have cheerful resolutions. The best Cheever’s characters seem to achieve is contentment despite imperfect circumstances.

Cheever’s is a world of commuter trains and cocktail parties, where everyone wears hats, has a cook, drinks martinis at lunch, summers, sails, and commits adultery. Not everyone is rich; in fact, money problems are a continuing theme. But the trappings, however tarnished, of a mid-century, Northeast corridor, upper crust way of life hang on all the stories. And that is Cheever at his best. He can bring us so deep into that world that it feels like living it.

Teaser Tuesday: Honey in the Horn

When Clay got to camp, Luce had the wagon-seat dismounted and breakfast spread on it. To his relief, she took the news of the killing very calmly.

-- Honey in the Horn by H. L. Davis. Wow! Those pioneer women were tough!

Honey in the Horn won the 1936 Pulitzer Prize -- the only Pulitzer for an Oregon novel. It is a classic coming of age novel about Oregon  homesteaders in the early 1900s.

This reprint edition from OSU Press features a new introduction by Richard W. Etulain.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Jenn at A Daily Rhythm, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Book Beginning: Honey in the Horn

THANKS FOR JOINING ME ON FRIDAYS FOR BOOK BEGINNING FUN!

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author’s name.

EARLY BIRDS & SLOWPOKES: This weekly post goes up Thursday evening for those who like to get their posts up and linked early on. But feel free to add a link all week.

FACEBOOK: Rose City Reader has a Facebook page where I post about new and favorite books, book events, and other bookish tidbits, as well as link to blog posts. I'd love a "Like" on the page! You can go to the page here to Like it. I am happy to Like you back if you have a blog or professional Facebook page, so please leave a comment with a link and I will find you.

TWITTER, ETC: If you are on Twitter, Google+, or other social media, please post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I try to follow all Book  Beginnings participants on whatever interweb sites you are on, so please let me know if I have missed any and I will catch up.

TIE IN: The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice is a natural tie in with this event and there is a lot of cross over, so many people combine the two. The idea is to post a teaser from page 56 of the book you are reading and share a link to your post. Find details and the Linky for your Friday 56 post on Freda’s Voice.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING



MY BOOK BEGINNING

There was a run-down old tollbridge station in the Shoestring Valley of Southern Oregon where Uncle Preston Shiveley had lived for fifty years, outlasting a wife, two sons, several plagues of grasshoppers, wheat-rust and caterpillars, a couple or three invasions of land-hunting settlers and real-estate speculators, and everybody else except the scattering of old pioneers who had cockleburred themselves onto the country at about the same time he did.

-- Honey in the Horn by H. L. Davis. I'm a sucker for shaggy opening sentences like this that set the stage and give a whole backstory in one go.

Honey in the Horn, Davis's 1936 Pulitzer Prize winner, is a classic coming of age novel set in Oregon in the early 1900s. This reprint edition from OSU Press features a new introduction by Richard W. Etulain.

Five Faves: Midwest Books

There are times when a full-sized book list is just too much; when the Top 100, a Big Read, or all the Prize winners seem like too daunting an effort. That's when a short little list of books grouped by theme may be just the ticket.

Inspired by Nancy Pearl's "Companion Reads" chapter in Book Lust – themed clusters of books on subjects as diverse as Bigfoot and Vietnam – I decided to start occasionally posting lists of five books grouped by topic or theme. I call these posts my Five Faves.

Feel free to grab the button and play along.  Use today's theme or come up with your own.  If you post about it, please link back to here and leave the link to your post in a comment.  If you want to participate but don't have a blog or don't feel like posting, please share your list in a comment.

FIVE FAVE MIDWEST BOOKS

My roots are in Nebraska and as the holidays roll around -- Thanksgiving especially -- nostalgia waxes for the flatlands of my childhood.

Any suggestion? What stories of the heartland tug on your heartstrings?

Here are five of my favorite books set in a celebrating the American Midwest.  You can tell from my list that my idea of "the Midwest" doesn't extend further east than about Davenport, Iowa.

• O Pioneers! by Willa Cather.  This very readable classic about prairie settlers is on the Radcliffe list of Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century -- the rival to the Modern Library's list. 

• The Road Home by Jim Harrison.  Harrison's inter-generational family story picks up where his earlier novel, Dalva, left off.  It has a permanent place on my personal Top 10 list and is probably my favorite American novel.

• The Echo Maker by Richard Powers.  Brain science and sand-hill cranes, no wonder it won the National Book Award.

• Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (reviewed here).  Robinson won the Pulitzer Prize for this uplifting and entertaining epistolary novel.

• A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley.  It may be a little overwrought, but this Midwest Gothic deserves its Pulitzer Prize.  It also won the National Book Critics Circle Award and made it onto Erica Jong's list of Top 100 20th Century Novels by Women.

Flashback Friday: The Stories of John Cheever

The Stories of John Cheever, which won the National Book Critics Circle award in 1978 and the Pulitzer in 1979, is a chronological collection that spans Cheever’s short story career, from pre-WWII up to 1973. To read this collection – just shy of 700 pages – is to live in Cheever’s head, tracking his artistic and personal development in a way that a single novel or volume of stories doesn’t allow.

These are not happy stories. The earlier pieces are particularly bleak and raw. While the later stories are deeper and more nuanced, they are still pretty dark. Precious few have cheerful resolutions. The best Cheever’s characters seem to achieve is contentment despite imperfect circumstances.

Cheever’s is a world of commuter trains and cocktail parties, where everyone wears hats, has a cook, drinks martinis at lunch, summers, sails, and commits adultery. Not everyone is rich; in fact, money problems are a continuing theme. But the trappings, however tarnished, of a mid-century, Northeast corridor, upper crust way of life hang on all the stories. And that is Cheever at his best. He can bring us so deep into that world that it feels like living it.

NOTES

I read this book back in 2006 or so, before I started this blog.  I can't say I enjoyed all the stories, but the collection left a powerful impression that has stayed with me.

This is the first time I've participated in Flashback Friday, but I like the idea and hope to participate more often.

Flashback Friday

hosted by Bookshelf Fantasies

Pick a book from your reading past to highlight -- something you’ve read yourself and wish everyone would read, preferably that is still in print, but was originally published five or more years ago.

Kitchen Remodel, Week 16: Mirror in the Bathroom

Other than getting an English Beat song stuck in my head, hanging a mirror in the new powder room didn't pack much of a punch.

But besides the mirror, the only thing going on with our kitchen remodel last week was the installation of a screened panel to hide the old steam radiator. Wow. That is really lame.  It's the tile.  We are still waiting on the tile.

And I didn't read anything about food last week either.  The Autobiography of Mark Twain has no references to food at all.  Nor does Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis.  I may have to take a break from both -- not because they don't talk about food, but because they are both long and . . . I hesitate to say boring.  How about, attention absorbing and important, but not 100% entertaining.

Apart from books, we had a fun eating weekend.  We went to a DIY wedding Friday night where the young bride and groom recruited their relatives to bake desserts.  Right after the ceremony, the guests were treated to a vast buffet of sweet treats.  It was nostalgic of church basement receptions, bake sales, and all things delicious.  Congratulations to Scott and best wishes to Emily! #Freywed!

WEEKEND COOKING

Hosted by Beth Fish Reads

Book Beginning: Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author's name.

TWITTER, ETC: If you are on Twitter, Google+, or other social media, please post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I am trying to follow all Book Beginning participants on whatever interweb sites you are on, so please let me know if I have missed any and I will catch up.

MR. LINKY: Please leave a link to your post below. If you don't have a blog, but want to participate, please leave a comment with your Book Beginning.



MY BOOK BEGINNING

The driver of the wagon swaying through forest and swamp of the Ohio wilderness was a ragged girl of fourteen.

 -- Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis.  This is a misleading beginning because after half a page of wagon trail woe the short section ends with, "That was the great-grandmother of Martin Arrowsmith" and we jump forward 100 years to the story of Martin's medical career.

Arrowsmith won the Pulitzer Prize in 1926.

Review: Interpreter of Maladies

Jhumpa Lahiri won the Pulitzer Prize for her first collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies.  The stores are not interconnected, but all feature Indian protagonists, either in Bengal, as immigrants in New England, or as second-generation Americans.

Each of the nine stories is a polished gem.  The main characters all feel like very real people, whether Lahiri writes about old ladies, new brides, middle-aged men, or children. The plots are all satisfyingly solid, without any gimmicky "gotcha" endings that can make short stories irksome.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

This is one of the books that I read for the three TBR challenges I am doing this year, and for my ongoing project to read all of the Pulitzer fiction winners.

Teaser Tuesdays: Interpreter of Maladies

As a result of spending all her time in college with Raj, she continued, she did not make many close friends. There was no one to confide in about him at the end of a difficult day, or to share a passing thought or a worry.

-- from the title story in Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri.  This won the Pulitzer Prize and has been on my TBR shelf for a while. 

Short story collections are never my first choice, so I am finally getting around to this one because it fell within my random choice method of selecting books for my 2013 TBR challenges.


Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event. 

Book Beginnings: Interpreter of Maladies

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author's name.

TWITTER, ETC: If you are on Twitter, please tweet a link to your post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I also recently signed up for Google+ and have a button over there in the right-hand column to join my circles or whatever it is. I don't really understand yet how that one works.

MR. LINKY: Please leave a link to your post below. If you don't have a blog, but want to participate, please leave a comment with your Book Beginning.



MY BOOK BEGINNING

The notice informed then that it was a temporary matter: for five days their electricity would be cut off for one hour, beginning at eight P.M.

-- from "A Temporary Matter," the first story in Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahir.

This is one of the books I am reading for my 2013 TBR challenges. It won the Pulitzer Prize for 1999, but I haven't gotten around to it before this.

2012 Challenge Completed! Battle of the Prizes, American Version

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

This challenge pits winners of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction against the winners of the National Book Award. Participants can read one Pulitzer winner, one National winner, and one double dipper, or read two of each.  The challenge runs through January 2013, so there is still time to sign up!

My Pulitzer choices:

•  A Bell for Adano by John Hersey (reviewed here)
• Tinkers by Paul Harding (reviewed here)   

My National choices:

• Mr. Sammler's Planet by Saul Bellow (reviewed here)
• The Spectator Bird by Wallace Stegner (reviewed here)

I am still trying to decide whether to host again in 2013, but assuming I do, I already have a list of possible books from my TBR shelves:

Pulitzer possibilities include:

• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
• One of Ours by Willa Cather
• Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry 

National possibilities include:

• The News from Paraguay by Lily Tuck
• Victory Over Japan by Ellen Gilchrist
• Them by Joyce Carol Oates
• Morte d'Urban by J.F. Powers

For details about the challenge or to sign up, please visit the challenge page, here, or click the page tab in the bar at the top of the blog. 

Review: A Bell for Adano

John Hersey won the 1945 Pulitzer Prize for A Bell for Adano, the story of an American Army officer in Sicily during World War II.  The Italian-American Major Joppolo wins the hearts and minds of the people of the town of Adano by, among other things, helping them find a replacement for the town bell, which the Fascists had melted down for cannon parts.

What is so fascinating about the book is that Hersey wrote it in 1944, while the war was still going on.  This explains both its lively, action-oriented style and its slightly forced tone of rally-the-troops enthusiasm.

It isn't a deep retrospective of the war or the politics of invasion.  It is breezy and fresh and filled with funny character sketches and set pieces involving the people of Adano and their interactions with the American officers running their town.

A Bell for Adano is a quick and entertaining read.  It is definitely worthwhile for its first-hand perspective on an aspect of World War II most of us never consider -- life on the "home front" of Italy after the Allies invaded.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

This counts as one of my Pulitzer choices for the 2012 Battle of the Prizes, American Version. 

It also counts for three TBR challenges: the Mt. TBR Challenge hosted by Bev at My Reader's Block, the  Off the Shelf challenge hosted by the team at Bookish Ardour, and the TBR Pile Challenge hosted by Roof Beam Reader. And the I Love Italy Challenge, hosted by the Library of Clean Reads.