At a time when people around the world are staying home, Melanie D.G. Kaplan of The Washington Post considered how to travel in one's mind, through literature. She asked a number of prominent readers and writers for recommendations of transporting reads, including Puiltzer Prize Administrator Dana Canedy.
Kaplan writes:
Dana Canedy, administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes, said she can’t think of a more appropriate book for this time than “Personal History” by Katharine Graham. The book, winner of the 1998 Pulitzer for biography, “speaks to themes currently replaying in the country — the importance of American journalism, a defining moment in history and the evolution of women leaders,” she said.
Canedy also recommended four Pulitzer fiction winners, including “Kavalier and Clay”: “The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck, “a masterpiece that, given our nation’s current economic uncertainty, is likely to stir in readers an empathy for the Joad family and its struggles during the Great Depression”; “Beloved” by Toni Morrison, “a stunning and important work of literature that examines the barbaric legacy of slavery through the life of a former slave named Sethe”; and “Less” by Andrew Sean Greer, “a generous book, musical in its prose and expansive in its structure and range, about growing older and the essential nature of love.”
"All the Light We Cannot See" author and 2015 Fiction winner Anthony Doerr also shared favorite books with the power to lower his blood pressure. Nationals pitcher Sean Doolittle cited Richard Powers' 2019 Pulitzer-winning novel "The Overstory" as "one of his favorite books of all time," also calling out 2015 Fiction finalist Laila Lalami's work.
Read the full article on The Washington Post's website, here.