shortly after i graduated college, i decided it would be a good idea to read all the pulitzer prize winners in fiction. i started the quest because i thought it’d be really cool, and i had already read The Color Purple, Beloved, and To Kill a Mockingbird. i started out with E. Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News and it took my breath away. this was one of the first books i had chosen all on my own that was absolutely stunning. i moved on to A Thousand Acres, Breathing Lessons and Carol Sheilds, The Stone Diaries. Each one was better than the last. i was amazed that writing could be so wonderful. next on the list was Peter Taylor’s A Summons to Memphis. I just couldn’t do it. i couldn’t finish it, it was so dreadfully boring, i nearly shot myself. and with that book my weird goal of reading all the pultizer prize winners died.

Today, i read that Carol Shields, Pulitzer-Prize Winning Novelist, Died at 68 and it made me think of that silly little goal. now, i think, maybe i should try it again. i mean how cool would it be to be the girl who read all the pulitzer prize winner in fiction? i could put that on my resume or something.