Our October book club book was Less by Andrew Sean Greer and it was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 2018. It got a very different review from each of us. One person really liked it, one person liked it, one thought it was ok, another didn't like the beginning but liked the end, one didn't like it and one really didn't like it. I went online, and reviews were very similar---a very mixed bag. I thought it was ok. It is the story of Arthur Less, who is entering a mid-life crisis as a struggling author and a single gay man about to turn 50. A past lover is getting married to someone else, and to avoid going to the wedding, he takes his mid-life crisis on a world adventure to avoid dealing with his problems.
It was touted as a really funny book. While I found a few humorous passages, particularly when he thought he was teaching in German, and although he thought he was fluent, he was far from it, but otherwise I didn't see much laugh out loud humor. He reminded me of a bumbling Inspector Clouseau who was very much afraid of commitment and totally out of touch with his emotions. I thought the book was very well written and it was an easy read, but others in our group really struggled to get through it. I didn't really connect too closely with any of the characters, which takes my enjoyment down a bit. I like to find at least one character who I thoroughly enjoy. For me, the character development was a tad lame as well.
I think that is really the beauty of book club--getting everyone's personal take on the same words. We all have our own filters and likes and dislikes.
I went online to find out how they pick a Pulitzer Prize winner, and it is pretty intense. Three independent judges are tasked with reading 300 works of fiction from that year and then narrowing their choices down to 3. Then another committee picks one from those three. Some years they are not awarded but that only happened in 2012 in recent years. In looking back on past winners (it started in 1948) I find that I have read and loved some, and read and detested others, and some I have never heard of. In 1948 the first book was James A. Michener's Tales of the South Pacific. An award is not given every year. Some noteworthy winners that I have loved include To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee in 1961, The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty in 1973, A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole in 1981, Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry 1986, Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler 1989, A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley in 1992, The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx 1994, and The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields 1995. I know I am in the minority in that I liked but didn't love All the Light we Cannot See by Anthony Doerr in 2015. Interesting but not favorites were The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt in 2014, Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides 2003, Empire Falls by Richard Russo 2002 and Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri. I did not like The Hours by Michael Cunningham 1999, nor Independence Day by Richard Ford in 1996.
I love to talk books with other people when we are traveling. Recently I learned that a friend has been keeping a list of every book she has ever read, and she started this list in elementary school. How amazing is that! I have the lists from all the book club books I have read, but now I am starting to write down as many as I can remember and try to keep up from this point forward. It will never be a complete list, as I am 61 years old and have been an avid reader for at least 55 years. Some of my favorite memories are bringing home sacks of books from the book mobiles, ordering books at school and as a teenager subscribing to a book of the month club (my mother paid). Reading has always been an important part of my life, and that isn't going to change.