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A few years after I left college, I began to realize that there was a lot of literature I hadn’t read. (I still haven’t read a lot of good stuff that everyone reads, like anything by Mark Twain or Charles Dickens.) I decided I wanted to do something about it by giving myself reading assignments.
I decided to start with American literature. Being an aspiring novelist myself, I thought it would help me to know what great works had been written in my own country. So I started reading all the books that have won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. (You can find the list by clicking on this link, clicking on archive and selecting fiction under the category search. Before 1948, the category was called novel, so you’ll have to do a separate search for that.)
It took me about two years to read all the books, and I just finished last year’s winner, Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, last weekend.
Reading these books taught me a lot about what passes for great at different times. Some of the books are truly wonderful, like The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck and The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder. Some are truly dreadful, like Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie (which I swear is a romance novel masquerading as literature) and A Fable by William Faulkner (which I’m pretty sure was given out of sympathy).
I learned that great characters make a book memorable much more than the plot. Think Confederacy of Dunces, The Shipping News, The Old Man and the Sea. Mostly I just got to read some really great books.
I’d love to have time to read the books that have won the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award and, of course, some international awards like the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize. I’d also love to read some of the books by the Nobel winners, when they have been translated or were written in English.
If there’s a kind of book you love, odds are you can find an award that is given to the best of them. I’ve seen awards for mystery, science fiction, gay and lesbian fiction, romance and many more genres. Seek out a list of great books and read them all. You’ll be greatly entertained and you just might learn something about what makes a book good.