Literature is food for the mind. Literature is history and philosophy. Literature transposes us in a different world; good literature transmits feelings, it shocks us. One cannot and should not neglect it. Though good literature is scarce nowadays and reading is a favorite activity of “the happy few", there are still very good fiction books that are worth buying, reading and keeping.

Book awards developed to grant a distinction to those writers who have earned a reputation. Their writings transcend time and places. Book awards have attempted to thank good writers in the name of past, present and future generations. Book awards festivities are nowadays a much-expected event for all those who are still fond of the world of books and who still enjoy a brief moment of escape from the monotony of the daily routine of modern times by means of reading literature.

The most notorious international book awards are without a doubt the Pulitzer Prizes. Pulitzer, a skillful and intense journalist, aimed at establishing the Pulitzer Prizes as an incentive to excellence; the first Pulitzer Prizes took place in 1917. Since then, the Pulitzer prizes have considerably evolved and are at present some of the most important awards for those working in the branch of writing.

Among the Pulitzer award winning books for literature, it is worth mentioning Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell, The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck, The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway and The Road, by Paul McCarthy, the 2007 winner of the Pulitzer fiction award.

The Nobel Prize in literature is extremely popular. The Nobel Prize is an international award administered by the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm, Sweden; it consists of a medal, a personal diploma, and a cash award. Sully Prudhomme, a French poet and philosopher, was the first to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature for his rare talent. Among the most widely read Nobel Prize in Literature laureates, we should mention Henryk Sienkiewicz, Anatole France, George Bernard Shaw, John Galsworthy, Albert Camus, André Gide, T.S. Eliot, William Faulkner, Boris Pasternak, Ernest Hemingway, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and the list can go on.

The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award is amongst the largest and most reputed international prizes of its kind. The award winning books of 2005 and 2006 were The Known World, by Edward P. Jones, and The Master, by Colm Toibin, respectively. These works illustrate the constant preoccupations of the writers who attempt to reach perfection in their works of art.

Though reading literature is unfortunately somewhat of a dying phenomenon for most modern people, we should not forget that a book is a spiritual treasure. Since life is short and time constantly plays a trick on us, it is impossible for us to read and absorb all the existing fiction books. Nevertheless, those who really appreciate and still want to read literature can try to select some of the award winning books that have contributed to the unprecedented development of fiction writing and fiction techniques.

The death of literature would represent an immense loss for all of us; let us give literature and fiction their well-deserved place, let us not give up our reading habits in an era when the Internet seems to absorb everything else.