MY FAVORITE READS

My reading preferences have always bent toward literary novels, and over the years I have devoured some of the great works, like William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire. In the last 10-15 years, I shifted my focus to modern works that had a chance of earning a coveted place in the Western Canon—Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin, Aleksandar Hemon’s The Lazarus Project, etc.

For efficiency, my search usually centers on major literary awards such as The Booker Prizes, National Book Award, Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and the Nobel Prize. I scour their annual longlists to find books that appeal, always with a critical eye. That’s my nature I suppose—I rarely read a book just for the simple pleasure of it. I am looking for great art.

As you might expect, I don’t always agree with the prize judges. I recently began reading the 2023 Pulitzer Prize-winning Trust by Hernan Diaz, and disliked it so much I did not get beyond the first 40 pages. It is a novel that lacks heart, with a protagonist that is a slave to money and author Diaz treats him coldly. It is “antiseptic” distancing according to one reviewer.

By contrast, Marilyn Robinson’s Pulitzer novel Gilead has a deep emotional core about the intersection and conflict between family and faith. For me, a book must be well-written from the standpoint of craft, but it must always carry a hopeful message about humankind.

In my contrariness, I disagreed with the 2017 Booker Prize to George Sands’ Lincoln in the Bardo. I thought the book was an awkward attempt to use magic realism—an art form mastered in Latin cultures by authors like Gabriel Garcia Marquez (100 Years of Solitude), and used effectively in the movies by Guillermo del Toro (Labyrinth and The Shape of Water).

I do like many of the Booker Prize winners, however. Like Julian Barnes The Sense of an Ending, John Banville’s The Sea, and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things.

I also take issue with the National Book Award sometimes. I disagreed with Louise Erdrich’s 2012 win for The Round House, which I thought was one of her weakest offerings. I fully concur with their 1992 award to Cormac McCarthy’s 1992 All the Pretty Horses, which eventually was re-issued as part of his Border Trilogy. McCarthy was the premiere writer of literary westerns, a rare genre indeed.

Sometimes I stumble upon a great read apart from the prize mechanisms. I have no recollection of how I found Sara Baume’s debut novel Spill Simmer Falter Wither—on the “seasons of life” of an Irish outcast and his equally damaged dog. The descriptions are vivid of this solitary man “shabbily dressed and sketchily bearded,” with “clodhopper feet and mismeasured legs.” It’s a gem of a book.

JONNIE MARTIN

MORE ON MY FAVORITE READS? Click on the “Books” page above for a list and a quick description. .