The books-and-reading convention in PEN/Faulkner award-winning novels

This study sought to determine if late twentieth century novelists continue the use of the books-and-reading convention developed in the nineteenth century The PEN/Faulkner Award novels published between 1981 and 1998 provided the selection for study A grounded theory of qualitative analysis of the sixteen existing PEN/Faulkner Award novels revealed seventeen categories of the books-and-reading convention All sixteen novels use at least one instance of the convention Ten novels use more than half of the categories The frequent use of books and reading to define characters, further plot, and point up theme attests to its continued use in the twentieth century in the PEN/Faulkner Award novels