Books

I just finished "The Namesake" by Jhumpa Lahiri. Great story about a Bengali family immigrating to the US, and the resulting impact on each generation of the family. It was a pretty good movie too, but the book naturally has more layers and depth.

Further evidence for my theory that if you're looking for a good book, you can do a lot worse than perusing past winners of the Pullitzer prize for fiction. Lahiri won in 2000 for Interpreter of Maladies, which I haven't read yet. My favorite read of the past year, Marilynne Robinson's "Gilead" won in 2005. The Pullitzer list also introduced me to Richard Russo, whose "Empire Falls" won in 2002. I loved that one and am about to start another of his. Roth's "American Pastoral", Shields' "Stone Diaries", Tyler's "Breathing Lessons" and McMurtry's "Lonesome Dove" are all amongst my top-25 or so novels and all have won the Pullitzer in the last 20 years.

In contrast, I can rarely get through Booker Prize nominated books, which seem to be chosen for their intellectualism and "cleverness" rather than for telling a great story. Out of the 2004 and 2005 Booker nominees, I read Barnes' "Arthur and George", Isghiguro's "Never Let Me Go", Ali Smith's "The Accidental", and Mitchell's "Cloud Atlas" (actually I didn't get beyond the 3rd chapter of the latter). I had issues with every one of them and none passed the tests of, "can't put it down" or "insist that everyone you know reads this book".