About The East Valley Book Club

We also have started an auxilerary group called the Serious Fiction Fan Club that will meet the second Wednesday of each month. Most of us also belong to the Mesa Bookclub that meets in the fourth week. Bill Davies is the organizer.

We will share the experience of reading only the best of serious literary fiction, ?best? being defined as books that have won one of the three major book awards:

The National Book Awards are generally considered the ?Oscars? of the industry and are selected by the Book Publisher?s Association. They have been awarded since 1950.

Pulitzer prizes began in 1917. They are most famous for the journalistic awards, but a Pulitzer is awarded each year for the most notable work of literary fiction.

The PEN/Faulkner award began only in 1981. PEN is the professional writers association and the selection jury is a writer?s group. The award is named after Faulkner because he donated his Nobel Prize money to a fund for the recognition of writing excellence.

Seventy-three books have won one or more of the three awards since 1980, (If you are checking my arithmetic, several won more than one award.) Email me and I will send the complete list. Sprinkled liberally throughout the list are the literary lions of contemporary American literature, writers such as Updike, Roth, Doctorow, McCarthy, and Proulx, as well as the new generation of promising writers. All have one thing in common???they exhibit the highest levels of literary craftsmanship where sentences paint word pictures of beauty and sensitivity, and sometimes create mysterious little thought gremlins that tiptoe into your subconscious where they titillate and fascinate, and sometimes even haunt, long after you put down the book. Excellent literature leaves you feeling very satisfied as in: ?Damn, that was good.?

Which is not to say this is the definitive reading list. Many worthy books didn't make the final cut, some because the competition was so great, or perhaps because the juries were just "stupid" that year. Nevertheless, this is a pretty good starting place for experiencing the pleasure of reading first-rate literary fiction.

This might end up being a "group of two," but we will be delighted to welcome anyone who wants to join us. And if you are inexperienced, please don?t be nervous, both of us are enthusiastic mentors who enjoy ?turning on? beginners to the pleasures of first-rate fiction.