Book Awards Reading Challenge

So far I've only read two of the books on my original list for this challenge. But I have completed two additional award-winning books, bringing me to a total of eight.

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson was a 2000 Printz Honor Book, and my review is here. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes was a co-winner of the 1966 Nebula Award for Best Novel. My review is here.

Published in 2006. 233 pages.
2007 Printz Award Winner.


With its themes of race, identity, and self-acceptance, this graphic novel (only the second I've ever read) was a great follow-up to my read of Nothing but the Truth (and a Few White Lies). Three separate stories that come together in the end, this is a quick read. I started it on Tuesday while sitting in the high school parking lot waiting for my daughter and finished it last night while eating an egg roll and a fortune cookie. The more I think about the book, the more I like it. Author Gene Luen Yang's discussion of the origins of the book (here) brought me nearly to tears. I think this is a book that everyone ought to read!

Cross-posted from my book blog.

I listened to the 1941 Newbery Medal winner, Call It Courage by Armstrong Sperry, on tape this week. My review is here.

Prior to that, I listened to The Giver by Lois Lowry, the 1994 Newbery Medal winner. My review is here.

Cross-posted from my book blog.

Published in 1998. 226 pages.
Awarded both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1999.



Brilliantly conceived and beautifully written, The Hours juxtaposes a few pieces of the life of writer Virginia Woolf with the lives of two other women. One is Clarissa Vaughan - nicknamed Mrs. Dalloway by her friend Richard after the character in Woolf's novel (first published in 1925); Clarrisa lives in Greenwich Village in the present day. The other woman, Laura Brown, who lives in California in 1949, is reading Mrs. Dalloway and struggling with her perception of her roles as wife and mother.

The 2002 film starred Meryl Streep as Clarissa Vaughan, Julianna Moore as Laura Brown, and Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf. Kidman won the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role.

Here are a few quotes about the book that put into words a lot of my own thoughts:

"[The Hours] is both a clever tribute to the life and work of Virginia Woolf, and a brilliant examination of the quietly desperate lives of three women." - Seattle Times

"Cunningham here undertakes perhaps one of the most daunting literary projects imaginable.... Cunningham's portrait of Woolf is heartbreaking.... With The Hours, Cunningham has done the impossible: he has taken a canonical work of literature and, in reworking it, made it his own." - Yale Book Review

"Brilliant... haunting - winding skeins of words that, as they unspool, render vividly the three heroines' complex interior lives." - St. Louis Post-Dispatch

The Hours was not on my original Book Awards Reading Challenge list, but because the Yahoo Book Awards group was reading it - and the Yahoo Classic Lit group was reading Mrs. Dalloway - I decided that I'd like to read them both. (I started with Mrs. Dalloway, but I got bogged down in Woolf's writing style, so I set it aside for The Hours. I'm committed to finishing Mrs. Dalloway before the end of the month though.) I'm also committed to watching the film version this coming week.

I can't say that The Hours is a "favorite" book - but I do think that it is noteworthy, and I'm glad that I read it.

My eleven-year-old daughter and I both read this Newbery Medal winner this summer, and we both think it is a terrific book. You can find out more here.

I've finished my first book for this challenge - E. L. Konigsburg's The View from Saturday. (This book is also on my lists for the Newbery Challenge and the "Something About Me" Challenge. Thank goodness for cross-listing!)

I thoroughly enjoyed this 1997 Newbery Medal Winner! I've posted a review on my book blog (here). I look forward to seeing what the others who chose The View from Saturday for this challenge think of it!

I'm alisonwonderland, and I blog about books at So Many Books, So Little Time. I blog about the rest of my life at We're All Mad Here.

This was a hard list for me to create. First, there are just so many possibilities to choose from, and second, because the challenge lasts a whole year, I'm tempted to bite off more than I can chew but I'm forcing myself to be somewhat reasonable (one book a month, for a total of 12). Here's my list:

• Margaret Atwood - Alias Grace (Giller Prize 1996)
• Jung Chang - Wild Swans (British Book Award 1994)
• Beverly Cleary - Dear Mr. Henshaw (Newbery 1984)
• Karen Cushman - The Midwife's Apprentice (Newbery 1996)
• John Grogan - Marley & Me (Quill Award in Biography/Memoir 2006)
• E. L. Konigsburg - The View from Saturday (Newbery 1997)
• Yann Martel - Life of Pi (Man Booker Prize 2002)
• Susan Patron - The Higher Power of Lucky (Newbery 2007)
• Louis Sachar - Holes (Newbery 1999)
• Wallace Stegner - Angle of Repose (Pulitzer Prize in Fiction 1972)
• Lynne Truss - Eats, Shoots & Leaves (British Book Award 2004)
• Laurel Thatcher Ulrich - A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 (Pulitzer Prize in History 1991)