I just started Jennifer Egan's
"A Visit from the Goon Squad", which today was named the winner of the 2011 Pulitzer for fiction.
Which got me to thinking about my TBR list. Shouldn't I be reading books that win prizes? I've only read three of the last ten
Pulitzer prize winners, four if you count "...Goon Squad."
Should we rely on critics and professors and intellectuals to guide our reading? Or listen to Snooki?
Are prize committees in tune with the times? Or are they just too damn stuffy and self-imporant? (In the 1970's, the Committee found no book deserving of the fiction award three years out of ten).
What do you think? Have you tried reading Pulitzer or Nobel Prize winners...just as a self-improvement device?
Paul Levine