3216. The Spectator Bird, by Wallace Stegner (read July 9, 1999) This was the National Book Award winner for fiction in 1977. The only other Stegner work I've read was the book by him which won the Pulitzer Prize, Angle of Repose, which I greatly liked when I read it in May of 1972. The story this book tells is rather fantastic but is very well-told, and the protagonist is an admirable character. I think I could do worse than read other stuff by Stegner. Reading this book reduced to 21 the National Book Award fiction winners I've not read. ( )

http://gr4c5.wordpress.com/2007/08/31... ( )

Winner of the National Book Award

Beautiful ruminative writing, of course. But a little too unrelievedly negative portrait of a man in his 70s aging not gracefully. ( )

fabulous writing; depressing, blah story. Should have been a short story. Reexamination of a life wasted, as far as the main character is concerned, and I stopped caring. What's with stegner that he has to take these introspective, grumbling into his beard journeys? No mas. ( )