Book Awards II Challenge Complete

You may have noticed a day or so ago that I signed up for the third Book Awards Challenge. Hosted by Michelle at 1MoreChapter, this is a great reading challenge and I’ve read some wonderful books for it.

This challenge started August 1st and runs through June 1st, so I’m a little early--how unusual ;o). This year's goal was to: Read 10 books that represent a minimum of 5 different awards.

Here are the books I read for the challenge:

Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck (1962 Nobel Prize winner)
The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman (1995 Carnegie Metal)
The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood (1987 Arthur C. Clarke Award)
The Road by Cormac McCarthy (James Tait Black Memorial Prize 2006 and Pulitzer Prize 2007)
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro (2006 Alex Award)
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (Pulitzer Prize 2008)
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (1985 Nebula Award) -- never did review this one, but it was very good
Holes by Louis Sachar (Newbery 1999)
The Spellman Files by Lisa Lutz (2008 Alex Award)
The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga (2008 Man Booker Prize)


Favorite book of the challenge: Travels with Charley was my absolute favorite. But that’s not really fair, Steinbeck is one of my favorite authors of all times. I adore everything I’ve ever read by him. So, if I take him out of the list, my favorites were: The Spellman Files and Holes. All three of these books are the lightest of those on the list in terms of tone. I also loved The Handmaid’s Tale and Never Let Me Go, but they are considerably darker novels.

Least favorite book of the challenge: None really. I liked all of them for different reasons. Some were light and fun, others were dark and serious, but I’m glad I read all of them.

New authors discovered in this challenge: John Stienbeck, Margaret Atwood, and Kazuo Ishiguro were the only authors I’d read before. The other seven were new to me. I will be reading more of McCarthy (I have No Country for Old Men), Orson Scott Card (I have the rest of the Ender series), Lisa Lutz (the other two books in there series are Curse of the Spellmans and The Revenge of the Spellmans), and Philip Pullman (I have the rest of The Dark Materials trilogy waiting on my shelf to be read).

Thanks for hosting the challenge, Michelle! I enjoyed picking and reading books for it. You find links to other bloggers who have finished the challenge here.