Awhile back, I committed myself to reading every Pulitzer Prize winning fiction book from the year of my birth, 1949, to the present. It had always taken me a long time to get through a book, I had always preferred non-fiction, and I knew nothing about the Pulitzer Prize, so it was a strange challenge for me. I wondered if my reading would get caught up to the present in my lifetime.
Well, only about six years later, I did it! I've read every one, from 1949's winner Guard of Honor to 2009's winner Olive Kitteridge--sixty years of award-winning books. Now I can simply wait each year for the new Pulitzer fiction book to come along, meanwhile reading scores of other books I want to read--mostly non-fiction.
I won't go into my critique of the Pulitzer Prize choices. Suffice it to say, while many of them are excellent books and a joy to read (The Travels of Jamie McPheeters, Lonesome Dove, etc.), many others are a pain to get through (A Fable, American Pastoral, etc.) and if not for what by then I considered a duty I never would have finished them. But what I did get from this challenging project was the discipline to read regularly and never to leave a book unfinished, the ability to read faster, and the relief of knowing that I can complete in six years what I was afraid I wouldn't live long enough to complete.
You can find very brief comments I've made about each book at http://oldelephantwings.blogspot.com/search?q=Pulitzer
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For the complete contents of the Butter Rum Cartoon, click here.
BEAUTIFUL cover page for a blog! EXCELLENT visual autobiography, with lucid and enticing captions that make the reader laugh and want to know more. Artistic talents throughout (except, of course, the tarantualas and the gun thing...you know, postal workers and all). So sorry about the army thing--your real life story has characteristics that I can identify with: working within the confines of regimented heirarchy created by man is often (usually) a way to feed man's ego (typically at the expense of other men, truth, and justice)...this last piece is my experience with the military (a child of the 70s and an NROTC and Pharmacy school dropout), and various aspects of society (Hummers, for example, or bigger/faster cars; McMansions--the mega-design ideas that drive any thing to extinction), or...well, lots of conveniences that turn into albatrosses--such as annual/quarterly design changes of household appliances (so you have to buy a new one rather than buy a part to repair the model you currently own/use).
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I get that you've thought about these same things!
I think your true calling is artistic: a writer or artistic web design who has ideas and opinions about humor, beauty, usability, magic, and joy (the building block sunbeams in primary colors is excellent).
Thanks for colorful and tender visual bytes of your life and heart.