He Blinded Me With Science

It took me F O R E V E R to finish Sinclair Lewis' novel Arrowsmith. And it was SO not worth the time I spent reading it. I started it while I was still pretty sick with pertussis and I was constantly falling asleep while reading but I just chalked it up to being sick. But then I got (mostly) better and continued to fall asleep and pretty soon I realized that this book is just boring and pretentious. Seriously, 1926 Pulitzer judges, this was the best you had? Don't read it. Don't let anyone you know read it. FRIENDS DON'T LET FRIENDS READ SINCLAIR LEWIS.

Book #8: Arrowsmith

I wanted to let this book marinate in my brain a bit before trying to write about it. You see, this book annoyed the living hell out of me. I don't mean that in a "wow these characters are so annoying that they frustrated me" kind of way. I mean in the "ISN'T THIS STUPID BOOK OVER ALREADY? WHY DID I SIGN UP FOR THIS &@$%*! CHALLENGE IN THE FIRST PLACE!???" sense. But  with a few days between me and the 400+ pages of pain it took to get through it, I think I understand Sinclair Lewis' aim a bit better.

Book #7: So Big by Edna Ferber

Note: We are lagging behind on this challenge right now but we have awesome excuses. Maria caught the plague (or consumption or scarlet fever or something else equally nostalgic) and I gave birth to a human. Both have put us more than a bit out of sorts for the moment!!! But, we are back and will finish this challenge even if it kills us (and it just might...). 

As an entrepreneur, this book can best be described as "triggering." While some may prefer words like "inspirational" or "motivational" to define a book that compels them to action, I don't think those are aggressive enough to describe So Big. On the surface this book is about "The American Dream," but it is also about the root of that dream. Many people look at American industriousness and see only the entrepreneur's desire for great wealth. However, there is also the pure and simple drive to do something the right way. Until someone understands that, they will never successfully run a business on their own. It is very easy to become lackluster and complacent and lose grip of your success if the fear of failure isn't eating at you somewhere beneath the surface. The insanely strong female character in this book, Selina, was driven by that exact force.

Unlucky Number Seven

I admit I expected to hit a wall at some point during this challenge, but I did not anticipate that it would come as early on as book #7. I've come down with pertussis (AKA whooping cough), and I'm going to take the low road and use it as an excuse for the delay. It's hard to read 100 pages a day when your body is so tired that you fall asleep ten pages in. But I'm going to look on the bright side; rather than focus on the debilitating cough that leaves me gasping for air every time it strikes, I'm going to use this experience as a way to better understand the world in which many of the characters from these early Pulitzer books lived. After all, the first widely tested vaccine for pertussis was released in 1925, the very same year that Edna Ferber's So Big won the big prize.

What We've Got Here Is A Failure to Communicate

When I was a little girl I loved the Little House on the Prairie books. And I mean, I loved them a lot. I wanted to be Laura Ingalls Wilder. One summer I dressed up practically every day in a long skirt that belonged to my mom and wore the bonnet that I got when my third grade class visited the one room schoolhouse at Greenfield Village and I just pretended, all day long, that I lived in Laura's world. I must have read each of the seven Little House books three or four times apiece. So it's not surprising that now, twenty years on from my days of prairie pretending, I find myself enjoying grown up stories of American prairie life.

Our sixth Pulitzer winner is The Able McLaughlins, by Margaret Wilson, and it is essentially a love story about Wully (short for William) McLaughlin and Chirstie McNair, who live with their respective Scottish-American families on the prairie in the "middle west" in the 1860s. Where exactly the "middle west" is located I'm not sure; at times I thought maybe Iowa, but at one point a character 'goes west' and then there is talk about him being in Chicago. So maybe it's Ohio? Somewhere with big wide open spaces. But I digress. Wully returns home injured from fighting for the Union Army in the Civil War and falls immediately (and I literally mean immediately) for Chirstie. He has to return to the service of the military to fulfill his commitment though, and when he comes home for good he finds Christie's behavior toward him greatly changed.

Book #6: The Able McLaughlins aka Kissing Cousins

I was dreading reading this book at first because I thought it was going to be another plodding story about an infuriatingly silly American family. Clearly, I was prejudging based on the title which reminded me way too much of The Magnificent Amberson. I was dreading this book so much that I was trying to find excuses to skip it or even abandon the project entirely! Ha! However, Maria texted me a picture of the back cover of her copy and my interest was peaked. The exact content of my reply was: "Blah blah blah, farm, blah blah blah frontier, blah blah blah oh! Conflict of old world customs. Okay that part sounds promising."


Sadly, there wasn't much in the way of "conflict of old world customs" but that in no way meant the book didn't have plenty to offer in other ways.

Book #5: One of Ours

This book was really two very distinct but related stories. In hindsight, I guess they did need to be told as one. To start you have a young man who is struggling to find himself within his life as the son of a well to do farmer in America's heartland. He craves a life full of academics and adventure but allows himself to be forced into a mundane existence to suit his family's needs. The entire first half of this book is extremely tragic. I wanted to scream and beat this dutiful son with a brick as he made bad decision after bad decision, simply because he refused to stand up for himself and make decisions that suited HIM.