Mondays: Musings/Mailbox/whereabouts

Do you feel compelled to read prize-winning (Giller/Booker/Pulitzer etc) books? Why, or why not? Is there, perhaps, one particular award that you favour?

I don't really feel compelled prize-winning books. If I find good reviews about such a book, in the blog world, I do check it out. I found quite a few of the prize winning books a drudgery to read. But then there are others I just couldn't put down. It depends on the storyline, plot, characterization and good prose not a mere prize.

However, I do check out Nobel prize winners. Ravindranath Tagore, T S Eliot, John Steinbeck, Pablo Neruda, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Orhan Pamuk are just a few I mention here. Booker prize winners work for me too.

Finally, the book matters, not the prize or any kind of hype.
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Received the following:
in the wake of the boatman by Jonathan Scott Fuqua from the author

in the wake of the boatman is a study of family dynamics and sexuality. The narrative concentrates on the life of Puttnum Douglas Steward, born during the middle of World War Two, and immediately considered better off dead than alive by his father. And so begins Puttnum's life. Spanning the next thirty three years, his is an existence of deep sorrow and humorous irony.

A World I never Made by James Lepore from the author

Pat Nolan, an American man, is summoned to Paris to claim the body of his estranged daughter Megan, who has committed suicide. The body, however, is not Megan's and it becomes instantly clear to Pat that Megan staged this, that she is in serious trouble, and that she is calling to him for help.

This sends Pat on an odyssey that stretches across France and into the Czech Republic and that makes him the target of both the French police and a band of international terrorists. Joining Pat on his search is Catherine Laurence, a beautiful but tormented Paris detective who sees in Pat something she never thought she'd find--genuine passion and desperate need. As they look for Megan, they come closer to each other's souls and discover love when both had long given up on it.

Selected Poems of Carl Sandburg

In more than 150 poems, arranged in eleven sections -- from Chicago to Poems of Protest to Lincoln to Anti-War Poems to Poet of the People -- readers can see what Sandburg was made of and, in turn, what the poet thought the American people were made of. Sandburg's aim was to write "simple poems... which continue to have an appeal for simple people," and throughout his life the poet strove to maintain that important connection.


Renascence and Other Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay
1917. Pulitzer prize-winning American poet, this is her first book of poems. Contents: Renascence; Interim; The Suicide; God's World; Afternoon on a Hill; Sorrow; Tavern; Ashes of Life; The Little Ghost; Kin to Sorrow; Three Songs of Shattering; The Shroud; The Dream; Indifference; Witch-Wife; Blight; When Year Grows Old; Sonnets I-V (unnamed); and Sonnet VI (Bluebeard).


Although I had asked for the Edna St. Vincent Millay, Stacy of Stacy's bookblog was kind enough to send me Carl Sandburg book too along with it. I can't thank her enough for it!
Angels Advocate by Mary Stanton from the author

Money’s been tight ever since Bree Winston Beaufort inherited Savannah’s haunted law firm Beaufort & Company along with its less-than-angelic staff. But she’s finally going to tackle a case that pays the bills representing a spoiled girl who stole someone’s Girl Scout cookie money. But soon enough she finds that her client’s departed millionaire father needs help too. Can she help an unsavory father/daughter duo and make a living off of the living?
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It's Monday! What Are You Reading This Week? is a weekly event hosted by J. Kaye of J. Kaye's Book Blog, "to list the books completed last week, the books currently being read, and the books to be finish this week."


I finished the following. Click the bolded titles for the reviews:


The Merry Misogynist by Colin Cotterill
Curse of the Pogo Stick by Colin Cotterill
In the Shadow Of the Glacier by Vicki Delany
The Heretic Queen by Michelle Moran

I have set aside the following books for the time being now:

The 19th Wife by David
The Known World by Edward P Jones

I am in the midst of:

The Wolf's Head by Peter Unwin
Blasted by Kate Story
Angel's Advocate by Mary Stanton

I plan to review, which is long overdue:

The Heretic Queen by Michelle Moran

and any other book I finish