Please link your reviews for your Award-Winning Classic here. This is only for the Award- Winning Classic category. It could be the Newbery Award, the Pulitzer Prize, the Prix Goncourt -- any literary prize. It must be the actual award-winner; runners-up and nominees do not count. Please include the name of the prize the book won in your review.
If you do not have a blog, or somewhere public on the internet where you post book reviews, please write your mini-review/thoughts in the comments section. If you like, you can include the name of your blog and/or the title of the book in your link, like this: "Karen K. @ Books and Chocolate (The Age of Innocence). "
My first read completed this year is "The Chosen" by Chaim Potok, winner of the Edward Lewis Wallant Award (and nominated for a National Book Award). It was a five-star read for me, and I don't give five stars very often (3/100 last year)!
ReplyDeleteI have been wanting to read that book! I am glad to hear you thought it was so good!
DeleteI just started (in 2017) and finished "The Education of Henry Adams" by Henry Adams, which won the Pulitzer Price in 1919. I actually had bought it almost a decade ago at a used bookstore just before I started law school - and promptly became far too busy to actually read it. I'm actually glad I waited until now to read it, though, because the current climate in the U.S. gives me so much more appreciation for Henry Adams' reflections on America from the mid-1900s to the beginning of the 20th century.
ReplyDeleteMake no mistake, it is NOT a light read, but it is full of memorable quotes. (The length of the prose sadly exceeded Litsy's character limit for most of the quotes I wanted to post! #booknerdproblems). Adams was a Bostonian by birth but really fell in love with Washington DC, and as a DC transplant myself I enjoyed reading how he fell in love with the city post-Civil War and also Googling various locations he referenced around the city. Even more meaningful, though, were the chapters that contained Adams' scathing criticism of the Grant administration, dismay at the American people for electing a dangerous idiot to the Presidency, and fear for the country's future as a result. The quote "One dragged oneself down the long vista of Pennsylvania Avenue, by leaning heavily on one's friends, and avoiding to look at anything else" feels as apt a description of life in DC now as it was then.
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ReplyDeleteI just posted my review of The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare, winner of the 1961 Newbery Medal.
ReplyDeleteI've just put up my review of John Newberry Medal winner Island of the Blue Dolphins, by Scott O'Dell. Thanks for hosting this challenge, I've been enjoying it!
ReplyDeleteI just posted my review of Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield. I really enjoyed this book so much!
ReplyDeleteI forgot to mention that Bromfield's Early Autumn won the 1927 Pulitzer Prize. Well-deserved!
ReplyDeleteLoved To Kill A Mockingbird! Cannot believe it took me 34 years to read it!
ReplyDeleteJust added the winner-novel of the Prix Goncourt 1956: The Roots of Heave by Romain Gary. It definitely deserved the award... and it surely doesn't deserve being out of print in the English edition!
ReplyDeleteJust left my link for an The Heart of the Matter - which won the 1948 Tait Black Memorial Prize for Literature, one of England's oldest literary prizes.
ReplyDeleteOops! I copied the wrong link. I just reposted, with the correct link this time, by review for The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene. Feel free to delete the original (#16).
ReplyDeleteThe more I think about The Slow Natives by Thea Astley the more I get out of it. That's the sign of good writing I think. After struggling a bit at first to connect to the characters I began to see why this won the Miles Franklin award. I am still not sure about the title's relevance though.
ReplyDeleteI just finished reading Friday the Rabbi Slept Late, the first in a series of mystery novels by Harry Kemelman. This book won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel in 1965. I enjoyed it and posted my review of it on Goodreads.
ReplyDeleteFor this category I chose the Cold Comofrt Farm by Stella Gibbons, the winner of the 1933 Femina Vie Heureuse Prize. - Anahit
ReplyDeleteA Passage to India by E. M. Forster - This was the winner of the James Tait Black Award in 1924. The story is set in India not long after the death of Queen Victoria at a time when the British were still in power in India. Miss Adela Quested is thinking about marrying Ronny Heaslop who lives and works in India. IF she marries him, it will mean she will have to move to India. She travels to India with Ronny's mother, Mrs. Moore, to learn about life in that country. This is a story of differences in race, religion, and especially culture. Many of the natives that Miss Quested meets are Moslems, but some are Hindus. Most of the "Anglo-Indians" (British citizens) keep themselves apart from the natives as much as possible. There were many words (not sure what language) I did not know and I was surprised the author did not provide definitions. Some examples are: pukka, purdah, and punkah.
ReplyDeleteTook over a month to read Gone With the Wind which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1937. Fascinating book. My review doesn't do it justice.
ReplyDeleteAdded my review, really feeling its inadequacy, of The Bridge of San Luis Rey. It was awarded the Pulitzer in 1928. I am reading Age of Innocence now, another Pulitzer winner, not because of the award, but because I read The House of Mirth for another category and rather enjoyed it.
ReplyDeleteMy choice for this category was Tom's Midnight Garden, which won the Carnegie Medal in 1957. It's one of the first time slip stories and regarded as very special, although for 21st century readers, Tom's time period, which is supposed to 'modern' comes across as just another version of old fashioned :)
ReplyDeleteJust added my link to my review of The Yearling which won the Pulitzer in 1939. So glad I read it, I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would!
ReplyDeleteFor this category, I read Frank Herbert's masterpiece 'Dune." winner of both the Hugo and Nebula awards. I look forward to reading the others in this series.
ReplyDeleteI (re-read) A Wrinkle in Time for this category after having read it the first time abut 26 years ago. I'm looking forward to the movie. :)
ReplyDeleteI read So Big by Edna Ferber, a Pulitzer winner from 1926. Excellent book!
ReplyDeleteI read a very unusual book I don't expect my English reading friends who know about (yet, who knows?) The book is called El Jarama, and it has been translated into English as The River (Jarama is a river in a municipality close to Madrid, where I'm from. Actually, the book names my neighborhood, Vallecas, and surrounding known places.)
ReplyDeleteThis book won a Spanish well known prize, Premio Nadal, and other prizes. It's considered one of the best books in Spanish for the XX century. It was published in 1955. https://silviacachia.wordpress.com/2017/10/01/el-jarama-the-river/
My comment has a typo, I meant "I don't expect my English reading friends to know about (yet who knows?)
ReplyDeleteHi, Karen. Would you mind changing my link (#22) to the following link at Goodreads?:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1991172720. I linked someone else's review by mistake.
Thank you, Shirley (stampartiste)
I read The Good Earth.
ReplyDeleteI read Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons.
ReplyDeleteNot sure I did the linking thing right the first time, so here's a second try:
ReplyDeleteI just started (in 2017) and finished "The Education of Henry Adams" by Henry Adams, which won the Pulitzer Price in 1919. I actually had bought it almost a decade ago at a used bookstore just before I started law school - and promptly became far too busy to actually read it. I'm actually glad I waited until now to read it, though, because the current climate in the U.S. gives me so much more appreciation for Henry Adams' reflections on America from the mid-1900s to the beginning of the 20th century.
Make no mistake, it is NOT a light read, but it is full of memorable quotes. (The length of the prose sadly exceeded Litsy's character limit for most of the quotes I wanted to post! #booknerdproblems). Adams was a Bostonian by birth but really fell in love with Washington DC, and as a DC transplant myself I enjoyed reading how he fell in love with the city post-Civil War and also Googling various locations he referenced around the city. Even more meaningful, though, were the chapters that contained Adams' scathing criticism of the Grant administration, dismay at the American people for electing a dangerous idiot to the Presidency, and fear for the country's future as a result. The quote "One dragged oneself down the long vista of Pennsylvania Avenue, by leaning heavily on one's friends, and avoiding to look at anything else" feels as apt a description of life in DC now as it was then.