Books and Prizes, Oh My!

 

Books and Prizes, Oh My!

 

Do you try to read the books that are nominated for major awards? Do you second-guess the nominations or do you usually find you agree?

 

This question forced me to look at my life as a reader from the wrong end of the telescope because I find myself asking how I discover books to read. I’ve been an avid reader for 50 years, and the ways I have learned about books varied from recommendations from friends, family, and teachers to displays at the local library and bookstore before Amazon existed. I realized that after the people and places in my childhood, I found out about books at the theatre. It’s not as odd as you think.

 

I was a child of the Seventies, so these titles shouldn’t surprise you. Books I read after seeing the films include The Exorcist [William Peter Blatty], The Omen [David Selzter], Poseidon Adventure [Paul Gallico], Three Days of the Condor [James Grady], and The Godfather [Mario Puzo]. The reverse to this trend was reading books and then seeing the movies: almost all of Stephen King and Ira Levin’s film adaptations, The Onion Field [Joseph Wambaugh], and All The President’s Men [Woodward & Bernstein]. The 70s was also the decade of sagas to TV screens from novels, such as Lonesome Dove, Roots, and Shogun.

 

The films that stood out to me as better than the books were The Godfather and Blade Runner. I had to do some mental work to connect Apocalypse Now to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. I was disappointed seeing The Shining because the topiary animals were so sinister in the novel.

 

I haven’t said a word about nominations and prizes because, other than the National Book Award and Pulitzer, I wasn’t aware of shelf-esteem, such as The Booker, the Edgars, or any other award until later. Much later. In hindsight, I noticed something odd about a spontaneous list of crime fiction I had read when I was younger.

 

Published in the 1970s:

·       The Godfather.

Edgar-nominated.

 

Published in the 1980s:

·       The Name of the Rose [Umberto Eco]

·       The Silence of the Lambs [Thomas Harris]

·       The Black Dahlia [James Ellroy]

·       A Fatal Inversion and The Lying Game [both by Ruth Rendell]

All were Edgar-nominated.

 

Published in the 1990s

·       Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil [John Berendt]

·       The Silence of the Lambs [Thomas Harris]

·       The Alienist [Caleb Carr]

·       A Drink Before the War [Dennis Lehane]

·       The Bone Collector [Jeffrey Deaver]

 All Edgar-nominated.

 

At around the mid-90s, all of my  stumbling and fumbling in the dark stopped because of the modem connection to the internet. Magazines such as Entertainment Weekly featured book reviews and a column from no less than Stephen King himself, and I wasn’t dependent on the stodgy New York Times Book Review and dodgy critics in any of the local newspapers.

 

I understand that nominations and prizes boost sales and provide readers and writers credibility, visibility, and validation, but I was almost 30 years old at the turn of the century, so I trusted my own brain matter. I was, however, not a writer until a decade later. You do read differently as a reader and as a writer. I had enough ‘experience’ and discernment to know what I liked and whether I was reading dreck or quality, and I say that about all genres. I should note that I didn’t have to wake up to diverse authors. I’ve been reading them for decades, too. The problem was that they were often not up for prizes and they lacked the big guns of the Big 5 Publishers. Example: Iceberg Slim.

 

I learned after the fact that many of the novels I enjoyed were nominated or had won an award.  I never consciously sought out Booker Prize authors or Nobel Laureates. I know within 10 or 20 pages if the book is for me. I can’t recall a book that made me wonder how it ever got published (well, maybe certain vampire or ‘sexy and risqué’ books) nor did I find myself asking what all the fuss was about, though I have noticed that publishers these days chase trends and the dollar harder.

 

The truth is they don’t know, and it’s Hit or Miss what agents think will sell. The majority of the books I have listed here are solid, so I’m not one to dictate literary standards; that is subjective.

 

To each their own.