TASK DEFINITION: In this task, you are given books product reviews in English language. The goal is to classify the review as "POS" if the overall sentiment of the review is positive or as "NEG" if the overall sentiment of the review is negative.
PROBLEM: Breathing Extraordinary Truths Into Ordinary Lives . I read this novel because it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.  Anne Tyler has a gift for portraying ordinary indivdiuals who live ordinary lives.  Yet her novel is anything but ordinary because her characters are simple, yet real and their dialogue rings true.  Moreover, Ms. Tyler, like Hardy and Miller before her, clearly believes and successfully posits that her mundane characters are heroic because they survive, perservere and present (albeit unknowingly) moral and spiritual lessons that are universal to us all. But my hesitation in giving this novel 5 stars is that, while it is great fiction, it is not the greatest fiction of its time. And this raises another issue.  Why have so many Pulitzer Prize novels, such as "Gilead," "The Known World," "Empire Falls," "The Hours," "Kavalier & Clay," and "Middlesex," disappointed me recently? While these are compelling and at times superb works, they are not, in my opinion, deserving of the Pulitzer Prize.  Of recent winners, only "The Shipping News" merits that distinction.  Perhaps I will focus on National Book Award winners, since they seem more uniformly satisfying.

SOLUTION: POS

PROBLEM: Are these reviewers as blind as Bobby Jobe? . I mean, come on. A blind golfer? I thought it was an intruiging premise, too, until I tried to hit balls with my eyes closed. I'm a 2-handicapper, and I was completely hapless. So forgive me if my suspension of disbelief came crashing down.     That said, Cullen writes a pleasant, if completely farfetched tale, with likeable characters. However, I thought the best parts of the book had nothing to do with golf. The subplot involving the mentally ill father was actually more interesting, believable and touching, and the best part of the book was a short bit about Allegheny men and their pickup trucks.

SOLUTION: NEG

PROBLEM: Difficult to start, difficult to put down . I had this book on my shelf for a while before I cracked it open, knowing nothing about it except the synopsis on the back and that it came recomended from another book.  The author goes into slight tangents of historical events -- at the beginning it seems pointless.  After a while, you understand all the links, and begin to become very interested in this character that is much like many careless intellectual college drop outs who never found it fullfilling and always found themselves bound by the system.   Maybe I liked it because I identified with her -- almost too much -- even though she is far richer and always seeking to put herself in a situation most level headed people wouldn't.  That's what makes her facinating.   In hind sight, I can see why many people didn't like it, but reading it, I was devoured by her smart writing style and the storyline.  Not until 3/4ths into the book you suspect anything out of the ordinary.  Suspensful, definately.   The last chapter was kind of anticlimactic.

SOLUTION:
POS