A few months ago, I’d estimate around October or November, I started noticing that my personal library was taking on a new form — it seems that, over time, I have veered away from simply purchasing books that I want to read, and instead started purchasing books that have some sort of intrinsic value. For instance, I owned The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden and Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, so I purchased the rest of his collection: his short stories, lesser-known works from the early 60’s and any other writing of his I could get my hands on. I did the same for James Joyce and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
My collection no longer was based on the presupposition that there were books that I wanted to read or were very interested in, it became an obsession to simply collect books. Over the course of a couple years, my collection, which started off with 50 books, at the most, swelled to its current number, 542.
One of the themes that I noticed developing was a miniature collection of Pulitzer Prize-winning novels; in my endeavor to collect “classics,” I had haphazardly developed a collection of these books. So, I decided, since I already had a jumpstart on this particular collection, why not attempt to complete the collection? And, if that weren’t enough, I thought “I don’t want to just collect these books, I want to actually read them all.” And then I thought “If I read all these books, I want everybody to know I read all these books. So, maybe I’ll collect them all, read them all in one year and then write a memoir about the experience!” because I really am that pretentious.
But then something else occurred to me.
This endeavor, which is a huge undertaking, might not actually be as self-involved as I originally thought. See, I knew that if I told people, “Yeah, I read every single Pulitzer Prize winning novel in one year,” that people would either be impressed, conclude that I way too much time on my hands or be impressed at the massive amount of time on my hands. I also knew that nobody would ask me, “So what did you learn about yourself and the world around you through this experience?”
Maya Angelou once said, “When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young.”
And it is with that in mind that I am going to embark on this journey. I’m not going to do this thing to impress anyone, to prove how much of a connoisseur of literature I am or even to simply say that I did it. I’m going to tap into the mind-expanding power of literature and let it consume me.
This is the first of many, many posts to come, however you will not find any Pulitzer-related entries on this site. To follow me on my journey, click your way over to another website, which will be registered later tonight.
Andrew is a husband, father, dog lover, craft beverage enthusiast, content creator, and niche market Internet celebrity. Formerly of A Table in the Corner of the Cafe and The Pulitzer Project and contributor to Barista Magazine and Mental Floss, he’s been writing on the Internet for years.
Thanks for stopping by a Novel Challenge- what a great site you have here. Have you seen The Pulitzer Project? It is similar to your personal challenge, but there is a group blog where participants post their reviews. Here is the site.