The 2008 Pulitzer Prize winners have been announced. Junot Diaz won best work of fiction for the book The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. The book sounds fantastic and I plan on getting it when the book is released in paperback. It was the first full length book he has ever written! Imagine winner a Pulitzer for your first book…
Doug
Just finished the above mentioned book. I had a ton of trouble getting through the beginning, but when I did I flew through it. Really emotional book. If you haven’t read it you should def. check it out!
Doug
I have been working on and struggling with how to begin my serious fiction piece. It seems that everytime I start it, I just delete a large portion of it and start all over! I don’t know why I am having such writers block! Please read this ( I think it will be my intro) and give me any advice you may have. At this point, I’m not sure if I am on the right track!
It had been sitting next to me at my desk for several hours now, closed, waiting. While the idea of lying down and beginning this highly recommended book appealed to me, I had other work to do. I did not realize that reading this piece was far more important than any other assignment would ever prove to be. I did not realize that as soon as I turned the first page, this book would call to me and haunt me, forcing me to return. I did not yet know the power of Africa.
Thanks
Stacia
I finally completed the novel “Love Medicine.” You guys should definitly check out this book! The amount of themes in this novel are countless. Some include: self-knowledge, survival, self-identification, love, loss of innocence, betrayl, etc. I wrote my book review as though I were writing an article for a paper. I used a program called InDesign on the mac’s. Although using this program is incredibly time consuming, I think the piece came out really nice. For some reason I could not get it to print on Friday, but I will try again in a little bit.
How is your reading of serious fiction going?
Kristin
So, I went book shopping yesterday.. I’m sure you all know how exciting that is!
I bought Missing Mom by Joyce Carol Oates, The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, The Wonder Spot by Melissa Bank, and a book of American poetry. I am SO excited to read these… I’m starting with Missing Mom, which I am really enjoying already on the first couple of pages.
If anybody would like to borrow one of the others, they are more than welcome to!
Krystina
I just finished The Road by Cormac Mccarthy. Reading this book was one incredible experience. Even though the tale was grim, dark, and chilling I still suggest that all of you to sit down and read it eventually. The writing was very unique and interesting. I found the book so good that I am now looking into some of his other work.
Doug
So, I started reading The History of Love I really like it so far there are 2 plots going on at once, so I am desperately waiting for them to meet. Each plot is very intricate and awesome. One is about a lonely old man who has written a story, but it’s not for anyone else to ever read as he describes it. The girl is in search of love to cure her mother’s lonliness. I am now eagerly waiting for the stories to meet I’ll keep you guys updated. Oh and thanks Kaitlyn for recommending it!
Jackie
On Sunday, my boyfriend and I traveled to Binghamton to pick up my roommate from the airport. I asked him (nicely, of course) if we could go to the Barnes & Noble near Binghamton, and we did. I had Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides in mind, but could not remember Jeffrey’s last name, so I asked an employee to direct me to my new treasure. After paying the cashier about fourteen dollars that I really did not have, I smiled and walked outside. The bag I was given was absolutely unnecessary, as I removed the book from it as soon as I exited the store. Sitting in the car on the ride back to campus, I intensely investigated the front and back covers and skimmed the reviews on the first couple of pages. Then, I read the first page.
That first page did one heck of a job of snatching my attention from all else in the world. I read: “On the morning th elast Lisbon daughter took her turn at suicide–it was Mary this time, and sleeping pills, like Therese–the two paramedics arrived at the house knowing exactly where the knife drawer was, and the gas oven, and the beam in the basement from which it was possible to tie a rope” (3), and felt desperate to find out what kind of journey I was awaiting. However, reading in the car makes me sick, and I had to stop. I set the book on my lap and eyed it every couple of minutes, wishing, waiting, and wondering. I already knew that I had chosen the perfect book.
FINALLY, I arrived on campus, hopped into bed, and felt as relieved as the last woman in a restroom line during intermission. I was shocked to find out that the first daughter’s first suicide attempt was unsuccessful, and consequently had a burning sense of bewilderment as to how she would actually pass away. I enjoyed myself as I read the following pages of exposition, then, WOAH! Just when the Lisbon-obsessed boys began to mingle in the basement they had been fantisizing about, it happened. I was honestly surprised. Eugenides’ craft really intrigued me, but I had other books to read. I set my gem on the table beside my bed and wished It was in my hands for the rest of the night.
That’s all for now… I hope I am on the right track!
Edit 2/27
The Virgin Suicides is told from the first person plural point of view, which is very interesting. I do not recall ever reading a novel written from this perspective, so realizing that there is not one main narrator is an interesting challenge for me. The narrator(s) are a group of boys who are, for some reason, obsessed with the Lisbon girls. They tell of their encounters with the girls, as well as their fantasies of interaction. Eugenides’ insights into the minds of adolescent males makes this story seem as though it was actually written by them. Granted, Eugenides used to be a boy, so he knows what it was like, but he conveys accurate (as far as I know) attitudes and thoughts. Now, the story does seem like a teenage boy wrote it, but each paragraph is composed of the perfect words, phrases, and sentences. The language used in this book is sophisticated beyond the ability of the average adolescent, but conversations about such things as tampons insists that the narrators are definitely teenagers.
Krystina
As we have been paying special attention to craft, I have also been paying special attention in my readings. Here are a couple of awesome sentences that I read in The Virgin Suicides:
“The majority of dying had happened during the Second World War when we didn’t exist and our fathers were impossibly skinny young men in black-and-white photographs–dads on jungle airstrips, dads with pimples and tattoos, dads with pinups, dads who wrote love letters to the girls who would become our mothers, dads inspired by K rations, loneliness and glandular rioti n malarial air into poetic reveries that ceased entirely once they got back home” (35).
I just thought that was beautifully written.. and this one (about Cecilia’s journal entries):
“The first person singular ceases almost entirely, the effect akin to a camera’s pulling away from the characters at the end of a movie, to show, in a series of dissolves, their house, street, city, country, and finally planet, which not only dwarfs but obliterates them” (44).
One day I will write sentences like these! 
Krystina
I found this site about Serious Fiction, for those of you who are in the same boat as me, not having any idea what to read or where to begin
http://marylaine.com/bookbyte/serious.html
I read through the list and am deciding between Bob Greene’s All Summer Long, and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Both sound pretty interesting, but very different.
Hopefully the site helps some of you out.
-Aut
