Arrowsmith Beginnings

Okay folks, I think I have found the first Pulitzer that has me a bit baffled. So far I'm not too excited about this one, mostly because there are a lot of big medical words I don't understand. I get the basic underlining story, but I'm afraid a lot is going over my head because I don't know what he is talking about. So far the story is about a young man who is going to medical school because he has always wanted to be a doctor, thanks to an old doctor in his hometown that he assisted. While at medical school he realizes that he doesn't agree with all the commercialism that comes with being a doctor, namely getting patients and where to practice to earn the most money, etc. He loves the science and is in awe of a professor named Gottlieb who is a bacteriologist and Martin Arrowsmith (he's the main character by the way) wants to be just like him. He just got out of a huge bind with two girls and seems to be on tract to being happy. I'm only about 76 pages in and feeling a big overwhelmed. I really like to read books blind, meaning I don't want to know what it is about before I start, that way I don't have any expectations for the book. I've really enjoyed this approach with these Pulitzer books, so we'll see where this one leads.

So Big Review

There are three possible morals of the book and I can't decide which is the right one. The first moral is to listen to your mother, she is always right. The mother, Selina, who is my favorite character of the book, gives her son some advice and of course it pans out exactly the way she says. This goes along with the second moral, which is: if you want something, work for it. Selina's son, Dirk, studies to be an architect and gets frustrated because it's not going anywhere and the woman he is in love with, Paula, won't marry anyone who isn't making millions; she just wants him if he is making money. After the war he decides to give up his goal of being an architect to sell bonds because he can make his yearly salary from his architect job in two months time. Unfortunately, Paula marries an older man who is a multimillionaire. The third moral is to be yourself and not follow the crowd. This is something I've noticed happening around me. Many of the homes I go into look so similar, there is no personality. I couldn't tell you what the people love or who they are except that they are following the trends and are trying to be like everyone else. The author, Edna Ferber, feels the same way about the wealthy people she writes about in her book. She paints them all as just trying to be like the others in the way they dress and act, and the activities they partake in. Dirk gets caught up in all this crowd. He becomes very successful and many of the young women would like to catch his eye. Paula and Dirk begin to spend lots of time together, she starts to control him, and they start meeting in secret places. It never actually says that they have an affair, but it's heading that way when Dirk meets another woman. Her name is Dallas O'Mara, she is an artist and is not concerned with what other people are doing; she's her own person. She is much like Selina in that she looks for the beauty in everything and sees it in places the rest of society doesn't. Dirk realizes that this woman is who he wants to be with and Paula begins to get on his nerves. What was the advice his mother gave him? "Someday you will want beauty and she will not want you." This is how the book ends. Dirk views Dallas as beauty, he loves all that she is and how she looks at the world. He loves how she doesn't follow the crowd and how she is her own person. He loves her, she likes him but chooses to go to Paris to study portrait painting. Her reason for not loving him back? He didn't work for what he wanted. He gave up architecture because he wasn't successful fast enough, she wished he would have stuck it out and worked hard for it. She mentions his hands how they're smooth and not bumpy from work, she would like his hands to be bumpy.

This story is actually only about the last third of the book. The beginning of the book is a portrait of the Dutch culture and the life of truck farmers. It's a story of a woman Selina, who is told life is an adventure and she should try other things, when she does just that she ends up married to a poor farmer and shortly after that a widow. She takes those lemons and makes lemon crème pie out of it. I love her attitude, her love of beauty in everything, her strength and her intelligence. If the story was all about her I would have given the book five balls of yarn, she is a great character and one I will remember.

So Big So Far

As I began to read this book, I wasn't sure if I would like it. The author skipped from one character to another so much that I was unsure which character the book was about; it caused me much confusion. As I continued reading I realized that the book is named after a nickname of the main character's son. The nickname came from the game you play with babies: "how big are you? Soooo Big!". The son’s real name is Dirk.

This book has made me reflect on my own life and how blessed I am. It tells the story of a young girl who marries a farmer and what the life of a farm wife in the late 1800s is like. As I read the book lying on my couch, while my two younger kids are having quiet time, I realize that I have no room to complain about the small amount of work required of me. Often I feel too busy to do the simplest task or I complain that my appliance that washes the dishes so I don't have to, doesn't work so well. No more. She describes feelings and emotions so well, it's not too hard to feel the exhaustion as well as the emotions of love that the characters feel.

I love that so far the main character Selina is very head-strong and independent, unlike many of the other farm wives in her community. One week after her husband dies she is at the market selling the vegetables from her farm—the only woman in a “man's world”. Her vision of what the farm could be shows her willingness to think outside the box, where her husband (obviously before his death) doesn't want to change from the way his father farmed the land. As the future plays out her visions prove to be correct and profitable.

Dirk is away at college now. I don't think the author thinks too much of young college coeds. She kind of goes on a rant for about three pages talking how they don't value their college education very much. So we'll see what Dirk becomes in his life, he doesn't know what career path he wants to take, he just knows he wants to be "successful" or rich. So we'll see how it continues, stay tuned.

New Approach

Okay, so I'm trying to make this blog a little more interesting so from now on I'm going to review the book as I read it. I haven't started the next book, but will probably tomorrow. When I read something interesting I will post about it. If any of you would like to read along and discuss it with me as I read that would be lots of fun.

The next book that I'm going to read is So Big by Edna Ferber. I hope you read along and make lots of comments! Until then, happy reading.

Able McLaughlins Review

I think that I enjoyed this book more than I've enjoyed any book for a while. It is just a good book full of good people, well mostly. I guess the main characters are good, but there always has to be someone bad in it to make for an interesting story. I had a really hard time finding this book to borrow from the library. The university my husband works for only had a copy that was not for circulation and our city library didn't have any. I tried an interlibrary loan and was told there were only 100 copies in our entire state (and I live in a LARGE state) so I went online hoping to buy one for $5.00, but the cheapest copy I could find was $20.00. My point in telling you all this? It may be a hard one to find, for those of you who live near me and want to borrow it, you're welcome to.

The story is about a group of people who came over from Scotland and settled in Iowa. It's a small community and most of them are related, but not all. It starts with a story about the McLaughlin's son, Wully, who has been fighting in the Civil War and he has a short homecoming. While he is home recovering from some wounds he is reintroduced to Chirstie and falls in love and decides that she is the one for him to marry. In fact they both kind of fall in love right a way. He has to go back to the war for several months but returns home anxious to see Chirstie and to marry her, but she doesn't respond to him and in fact is cold and almost frightened of him. I don't want to go into detail about why because it would ruin the book, but it is a bad thing that happens to her while he is away.

The rest of the book is a love story between these two people and how they build their lives and make something great out of something tragic that happens. I really liked Wully, I think he is an excellent man and personifies all that is good in the world. I also loved to read about Wully's mother, Mrs. McLaughlin. She is the kind of woman I would like to be. She's industrious, kind, funny, and all around just a great woman and mother, she is one of my favorite characters.

Although there is sadness and some angry emotions in this book, mostly of revenge, it is an uplifting story about human nature and how healing it is to forgive and to love. I would highly recommend it to anyone.

One of Ours Review

I was really excited to read this book because I'm a fan of Willa Cather. She is most known for her books "My Antonia" and "Oh, Pioneers" and it was surprising that "One of Ours" was her prize winning book and one of her least known, at least to me. It started out talking about a young boy named Claude and his desire to make something of himself. He and his father had kind of a rocky relationship. I think that Claude was a little embarrassed of his father and definitely of his older brother, Bayliss. As he grew his desire to move on from their farm into the world to make something of himself and hopefully loose some of his awkwardness grew. He tried to go to the University of Nebraska, but his mother was adamant that he go to a little church college. Claude began to take some courses that he was excited about (one he took at the University, but I don't think he told his mother) and he made friends with a family. For some of this section you think there will be a romance between Claude and one of his friend's mother, but nothing comes of it and I have to say, thank goodness. When Claude returns home for his break his father tells the family how he bought a ranch in Colorado and his son, Ralph, will be going to run it so that would mean Claude had to stay and take care of his mother and the older black lady, Mahailey, that works for them, thus crashing all of Claude's dreams of becoming something other than a farmer. He takes it and runs with it though, which was something I was impressed with. He didn't do a lousy job of it, he threw himself fully into making the farm something great and he did it.

During this time he hooked up with some friends from high school and fell in love with one of the girls, Enid. With a name like that you have to know she's no good and she isn't. After they get married she denies Claude any marital enjoyment and becomes actively involved in politics and prohibition. Her sister in China becomes ill and so she leaves Claude (not in a divorce way, just in a leaving on a trip way) and goes to be with her sister. All in all, this made Claude happy. Before he got married he believed Enid would change to be like his own mother, but she was too modern and I think extremely selfish. I wondered why she even married him, she never seemed to love him. Admirably enough he stays true to his unhappy marriage throughout the book.

Soon after this the war breaks out in France (this is really the focus of the book) and Claude has a desire to become involved. At this point he joins the army and we catch up with him on his break before he ships off to France, when he's coming home to Nebraska. His farewell to his mother was one of the most touching points of this book, you could truly see the love this mother and son had for each other and I have to admit my eyes moistened.

The rest of the book, I hate to say, was not as enjoyable. It was very choppy. It seemed that the author heard some stories of the war and just threw them in; they didn't really connect to each other. We hear about a soldier he saw at one of the stops who was handicapped and he had a girlfriend. Claude becomes interested in them and follows them around, the next day he asks about this boy, but that is the end. The soldier never comes into the book. This is just one example, there are many stories that don't really pan out, they're just stories.

All in all, I could hardly put the book down at the beginning and when I came to the war I read only to see how he would die because you knew that finally Claude was making something of himself and it wasn't going to last. I think that the author should've won for her other books, but I'm glad she did win because she is a great author.

Alice Adams Review

The main character Alice is a young female with parents and an older brother. Her vision of the world at the beginning of the book is very naïve. She believes in the good in every body and isn't aware that they don't like her and think she is pushy and a flirt. When she attends a dance, with her brother who hangs around with the wrong sort of people, she comes to a realization that the people she thought were her friends really weren't. Nobody asked her to dance and no one really talked to her. All the boys who used to come around her house stopped coming and no longer associate with her. Her mother, who I believe is a little over dramatic, thinks it's all her father's fault because he is settling in his job and not trying to make more of himself. Many times in the book Alice's parents have an argument over this subject. Alice's mother believes that the father could make a great living running a glue factory, but thinks he is lazy because he refused to do it and remains with his employer, Mr. Lamb. Alice's mother believes that Alice would have more friends if they had more money.

Alice's father is very sickly and at the beginning of the book is off work because of being ill. As he finally gets better Alice begins having regular visits by a great young man who is wealthy and is a relative to a wealthy family in town. Alice makes up a lot of stories so that he will think more highly of her and her family. The father decides he needs to help Alice and begins to open the glue factory. There are some ethical questions regarding the recipe for the glue that has been stopping him all these years and it has something to do with his boss, Mr. Lamb. The poor father almost drives himself mad wondering what Mr. Lamb thinks of him. Mr. Lamb in the end turns out to be a great man and not so much the typical rich person that the Adams family believes him to be, although the mother still isn't satisfied with her husband and the decisions he had to make. The young man who is visiting Alice on the other hand, turns out to be not so great, and does listen to what other people say of Alice.

The book made me really think about how much emphasis I put on what other people think of me. In the end does it really matter? Throughout this book that is the Adams family's concern: they are embarrassed of their small rickety house and that they don't have paid help and that Alice's dress is the wrong material. What it boils down to in the end is what you make of yourself and how you treat other people. Alice realizes that and makes a change in her life for the better.

The beginning of this book was rather slow and uninteresting to me, but as it went on and I got to know the characters better and begin to have interest in their lives the book improved a lot.

Age of Innocence Review

I'm afraid to say that this book was rather boring to me. Most of the beginning of the book talks about New York society, something that doesn't really interest me. I felt I was waiting for something to happen that would make me care about the main character, ol' whatsisname. I basically knew the way the story was going to go so I was just kind of waiting for it to happen, especially when he started to visit his fiancé's cousin a lot and was excited by how different she was and how she didn't care what others thought of her. He was tired of the routine of daily life and of expecting what was to come. I was glad but unsure when he married his fiancé. I felt he was being honorable but at the same time kind of stupid, because I knew that he had feelings for Ellen (the cousin).

Ellen had something going on with her ex-husband who she wanted to divorce, though her family was against it. This kept them from getting married and sent him to marry his fiancé. The best part of the book was the end when he was about to drop the bomb to his wife that he was going to run off to Japan or somewhere far away with Ellen, but when his wife dropped a bomb first that she was pregnant he really did the honorable thing and stayed and they had three children. His wife died after the third was born, but he stayed and raised them. At the very end he is with his oldest son who is about to be married and they are traveling to France and he has the opportunity to see Ellen. Does he take it or not? I will leave that question unanswered (if you really want to know tell me and I'll post it, but if you want to read the book this is the only part that is a surprise so I don't want to ruin it for anyone).

Stay tuned for Wednesday and I'll post the review for Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington.

A Few Changes and a Review

I've been thinking about how I can make this blog a bit more exciting and decided that what people are really interested in reading are the reviews so I've decided I'm going to focus on posting reviews. As I read each book I'll post my thoughts and feelings on the book as I read. I will be posting more often during the week (I'll always post on Monday) and then if you would like to read along with me you can. Now, I have a confession to make, I'm not actually reading the book that won the award in 1919, I read that several weeks ago. I actually just finished the book that won in 1924, so the next few books I will post my review and also some additional thoughts on the book. Each week it will be a different review until we get to the book from 1924. Does that make sense? I hope so. So this week the book that I will review is the "Magnificent Ambersons" by Booth Tarkington.

I think I really enjoy reading books that are written about people and their lives. I must be a nosy person at heart! I enjoy reading the gossip that happens to them and who they fall in love with and who doesn't like them and so on. This is a perfect example of that kind of book. It is much like an American version of a Jane Austen novel. It is written about a family, the Ambersons, who build a town and are the most prominent figures in the town. Although the daughter of the family patriarch, "the Major" is beautiful and admired by everyone, she marries and has a son that everyone in the town hates and can't wait until he gets his "comeuppance". He's snotty, proud, and rude to everyone in the town. The book follows him (his name is Georgie and is actually called that throughout the novel because he has an uncle named George - it helps keep them separate) throughout his life. My feelings for Georgie were kind of like a rollercoaster. At the beginning, I would say until he goes to college, I didn't like him at all. He was a brat. Once he begins college and he falls in love, I started to think he wasn't so bad and then all heck breaks loose and he drops down to the bad side, but in the end he redeems himself.

In the middle of the book Georgie hears that the town is talking about his mother and the father of the girl he is in love with (got that?). Georgie's father dies and these two begin seeing each other regularly. Georgie's only concern is for the good name of his family and not so much for his mother. This is actually why the book dropped from 5 to 4 yarn balls for me. I think he is overly dramatic about the talk that is happening. He confronts the town gossip and then goes ballistic with his Aunt Fanny and his mother. In many ways he overreacts and I kind of found myself rolling my eyes at times and thinking he needed to chill out. I think I felt the same as his uncle who tells him that the talk would die down and not to listen to it. I think the real reason Georgie freaks out is something that the book really doesn't address. Georgie wants to marry Lucy and it's her father that is courting Georgie's mother. Well, Lucy's father doesn't think Georgie is very useful to society because Georgie wants to be a gentleman and have no profession and he won't give Lucy his blessing. I think that Georgie doesn't want his mother to be with Lucy's father because Lucy's father won't let Georgie be with Lucy. Does that make sense?

All in all, the book is enjoyable and ends very well. It talks a lot about the growth and development of a city. At the beginning of the story Lucy's father is trying to invent the automobile and by the end they are more common than the horse and buggy. The town grows so much and so fast that it becomes unrecognizable to those who helped build it. I really enjoyed reading it and would recommend it to anyone who does enjoy books about society.

Review of His Family

Let me explain the balls of yarn. This is my rating system. I love to knit and I also love yarn, so naturally this is what I chose to show how much I love a book or don't love a book. The rating will go from one ball of yarn for books I don't really like to five balls of yarn for books I love. And now on to the review!

Although the subject matter of this book is not filled with thrills and chills or even with any sort of suspiciousness, it is an enjoyable book about a man whose wife passed away and left him to raise three girls. This story is set in New York in the early 1900s, and luckily at this time having a housekeeper was fashionable and the only way to live, so he didn't need to worry about cleaning and cooking. Somehow he lives quite comfortably, without too many cares, even though he only seems to be lightly interested in his business of selling newspaper clippings to people who want to see their name in print, which I have to say is a rather odd business, in my opinion.

One thing I really enjoyed was reading his take on each of his girls' personalities. His oldest daughter is pregnant and gives birth to her fifth child. She is very particular about being "old fashioned" and staying home to take care of her kids. She is completely involved in her kids' lives and doesn't seem to have time for anything else. His middle daughter, who this book is mostly about, is overly involved in her career, something that during this time was not done. She is in her 30s and unmarried. Instead she spends her time as a principal at a school for children and immigrants who can't afford private schools. She feels it is her mission to save all of them from any grief or hunger and to open public schools where anybody can go, for free. There is a doctor also serving the same people who wants to marry her, but she is afraid to become like her older sister and become so involved in her own children that she can't fulfill her career. The youngest daughter is very flippant and unconcerned with money or morals. She marries, mostly for money, and her marriage ends and she enters another. She doesn't want children (another thing not looked kindly upon in this time) and loves to spend money.

When tragedy hits and a war begins you can see how this family somehow pulls together and makes the most of the hard times. In the end I began to care about each of them and felt concern and joy over their lives. This book was one of the most enjoyable books I've read. It made me think about my own siblings. I have four sisters and one brother and each of us have basically followed the same path. We are all married and my sisters and I each have children and are stay at home moms; our children are being raised in the best way possible that each of us can do, but they are very different from each other. We each have our ideals and interests, but it's what we do with them that makes a difference for our posterity.

Ernest Poole

Ernest Poole is the author of our first book "His Family". There really isn't much information about him, most places that I found that talked about him all said pretty much the same thing. He was born in Chicago in 1880. He graduated from Princeton University and was a journalist. One thing he was known for was being active in social reforms which included the ending of child labor. In the book "His Family" one of the main characters was very active in social reform herself, she worked diligently to help out the children of immigrants and those less fortunate to get a good education.

He was also a World War I correspondent for the Saturday Evening Post, where he was stationed in Europe. He was also very active in the Russian Revolution and many of his later novels were about Russia and the life there.

During his life he had 24 novels published. He also founded the Foreign Press Service that negotiated for foreign authors with English-language publishers.

Ernest Poole died in New Hampshire in the year 1950.

Next Monday I will post my review of his Pulitzer Prize winning novel "His Family".

source: Wikipedia.org

What Was Happening in 1918?

I have to be honest: I am not a history buff. I am never sure when things happened in history: wars, assassinations, laws passed, you name it and I am unsure when it happened. This new project that I've taken on for myself will hopefully help change that. Now that I'm older, maybe I'll retain more information than I used to. We'll see.

The first book that we will be looking at is obviously the very first Pulitzer Prize winning book ever. It is called "His Family" by Ernest Poole and it was awarded the prize in the year 1918.

This was a huge year for much of Europe, and many amazing things happened. Russia moved their capital from Petrograd to Moscow and also declared separation of church and state. Also, in Russia, the Bolshevik party became the Communist party and severed all diplomatic ties with the United States.

But for this year and this book I really wanted to focus on what happened in the United States during this year. Of course, the US was involved in WWI and many big things happened with the war during this year. Herbert Hoover was the president of the United States and as a result of the war he called for "wheatless and meatless" days to help with the war effort. In June of this year the very first airplane bombing raid by an American took place. It's amazing that it just happened in 1918, but I guess that was 92 years ago.

On a lighter note, here are some interesting facts that happened during 1918. A couple of laws with a HUGE impact on our lives were passed. In January, Mississippi became the first state to ratify the 18th amendment, don't worry I didn't know which one it was either; it was prohibition. On May 21st the House of Representatives passed an amendment that would allow women to vote. Just 92 years ago, ladies. Also, daylight savings time went into effect this year. Oh, and the first airmail stamp was issued in May of 1918.

There were some tragic events that took place this year. There was a Spanish Flu epidemic that hit the US. The first case happened in March and became a worldwide pandemic. In October, 21,000 people died in one week in the United States and by November it had spread to Western Samoa killing 7,542 people by the end of the year. After being warned of a flu pandemic ourselves this past year, this really hit home to me. Also in NYC (where this book takes place) the worst subway accident happened killing 97 people.

And here are a couple of random animal tragedies to end on. In July, lightning killed 504 sheep in Utah's Wasatch National Forest and I have to put this in, because I'm a birdwatcher, but in February the last captive Caroline Parakeet (the last breed of parrot native to North America) died at the Cincinnati Zoo.

Sources: Wikipedia.com, hisdates.com, and historyorb.com

Welcome!

Thank you for visiting my blog! I'm really excited to start this project up. I have often wondered what the Pulitzer (pronounced 'pull it sir') prize winning books are like and decided that I would read them all. Many are books that I've never heard of and amazingly enough are hard to find at my local library. I am not a literary critic (as I mentioned above) I'm just a plain Jane who loves to read and share what I read. My reviews will probably not be deep or analytical, but they will tell you what I think of the book and whether it's worth reading or not.

I will basically try and post a new blog each Monday morning. When I start a new book the first week will be a bit of a history lesson, telling what was happening in the world during the year the book won. The second week, we will learn a little something about the author and the third week I will post my review, by then I should hopefully finish the book. If I didn't finish the book, just know there will be something posted every Monday morning. Also, please leave your comments, I would love to know who is reading this and what you think of my reviews, whether good or bad.

Again, thank you for reading and I hope you stick with me during this journey I am taking.