2010 Pulitzer Winners...

...or four more books behind...

But that's OK!  I'm in the middle of listening to the The Hemingses of Monticello, but, in the meantime, the 2010 winners that I will be adding to my list are:


Fiction: Tinkers by Paul Harding

History: Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed

Biography: The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T.J. Stiles

General Nonfiction: The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and its Dangerous Legacy by David E. Hoffman

Anybody excited about any of these?

Olive Kitteridge - Winner, Fiction, 2009

Olive Kitteridge

By: Elizabeth Strout

Random House, 2008

Olive Kitteridge is a story about life.  Strout used a collection of thirteen short stories about the people of coastal Crosby, Maine with one connecting character, Olive Kitteridge, to tie them all together.  Sometimes Olive is the main character and sometime she is only mentioned, but in the end the story of her life has been told.  I laughed, I cried, I felt annoyed, I felt empathy.  It is raw and beautiful.  

Because Strout's novel is a compilation of short stories, there is not a true climax of the story, but that fits well.  The reader really gets the sense that they are just following through life with these people.  Their experiences are mundane, which is okay because there is something in Olive Kitteridge that most people of all ages can relate to.  She explores what it is like to be young and what it is like to be old. I will warn that there are parts of this book that deal with situations and contain language that might not be suitable for all ages.  That aside, I enjoyed Olive Kitteridge and would be interested to if others felt the same way.