This blog is supposed to help me keep track of my "book project," the mammoth romp through Canadian and American literature that I started almost 2 monthes ago. I'm trying to read all of the Governor General(lit. prize in Canada) and the Pulitzer prize winners that have been awarded for fiction since each prize's inception. Over the 25 years of my life I've read a few, but there are still so many more to go. I'm keeping a running count as I get ever closer to the completion of a goal that has no immediate end. Librarians, beware...I am your best friend and your worst nightmare.:) The reactions I've gotten thus far, when I tell people of my goal, are funny...most people, when I tell them I'm a pastry chef say "Wow, that's cool!" Then, I tell them I'm gay. They say "Huh. Okay, that's cool too." Then I tell them I'm trying to read all the GG's and Pulitzers and they say "WHAT THE FUCK WOULD YOU WANT TO DO THAT FOR? THAT'S A LOT OF FUCKING BOOKS!"
I'm currently reading The Dark Weaver by Laura G. Salverson, it won the Governor General in 1937, the 2nd novel to do so(GG started in 1936, Pulitzer in 1918, in case you were wondering). I'm not too far into it, so there's not much to report thus far re: plot. Funnily enough, when I first looked this book up, I conjured up the image of Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalott" when he writes "there she weaves by night and day/A magic web with colors gay./She has heard a whisper say,/A curse is on her if she stay/To look down to Camelot." There already appears to be a "weaver" in the story(hence the title, methinks:)), but this book is about settlers in the Canadian West, not a woman trapped in a tower...:)
One of the neat things about this book is where it comes from. The project has forced me to borrow books through the Seattle Public Library from other places (interlibrary loan). So far I've read books that have come from California, Idaho and southern WA state. This book comes all the way from Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. What's cool about that? My dad explained to me, when I was young, the story behind the song "Ohio" by Crosby, Stills & Nash; it's about the students that got killed during Vietnam protests at Kent State. I never think of that school unless I hear that song...though why would I, I guess. To get a book from there, of all places, was kind of freaky...Well, I need to get back to it, and hit the sack...Current count: GGs-11, Pulitzers-14.