Liam Posted October 27, 2016 Share Posted October 27, 2016 With the 2016 Booker Prize winner having been announced on Tuesday, just thought this might be an interesting topic to throw up. Find the Booker and Pulitzer prize lists below (I appreciate there are other awards, but these are the two that I tend to think about when it comes to UK and US fiction). Which books have you read? Thoughts? Etc. I do understand that a prize is not a sign of quality necessarily, but most people would have at least read a couple of these books by happenstance as much as anything else. Booker prize winners Spoiler 2016 - The Sellout (Beatty) 2015 - A Brief History of Seven Killings (James) 2014 - The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Flanagan) 2013 - The Luminaries (Catton) 2012 - Bringing up the Bodies (Mantel) 2011 - The Sense of an Ending (Barnes) 2010 - The Finkler Question (Jacobson) 2009 - Wolf Hall (Mantel) 2008 - The White Tiger (Adiga) 2007 - The Gathering (Enright) 2006 - The Inheritance of Loss (Desai) 2005 - The Sea (Banville) 2004 - The Line of Beauty (Hollinghurst) 2003 - Vernon God Little (Pierre) 2002 - Life of Pi (Martel) 2001 - True History of the Kelly Gang (Carey) 2000 - The Blind Assassin (Atwood) 1999 - Disgrace (Coetzee) 1998 - Amsterdam: A Novel (McEwan) 1997 - The God of Small Things (Roy) 1996 - Last Orders (Swift) 1995 - The Ghost Road (Barker) 1994 - How Late It Was, How Late (Kelman) 1993 - Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (Doyle) 1992 - The English Patient (Ondaatje) 1992 - Sacred Hunger (Unsworth) 1991 - The Famished Road (Okri) 1990 - Possession: A Romance (Byatt) 1989 - The Remains of the Day (Ishiguro) 1988 - Oscar and Lucinda (Carey) 1987 - Moon Tiger (Lively) 1986 - The Old Devils (Amis) 1985 - The Bone People (Hulme) 1984 - Hotel Du Lac (Brookner) 1983 - Life & Times of Michael K (Coetzee) 1982 - Schindler's Ark (Keneally) 1981 - Midnight's Children (Rushdie) 1980 - Rites of Passage (Golding) 1979 - Offshore (Fitzgerald) 1978 - The Sea, the Sea (Murdoch) 1977 - Staying on (Scott) 1976 - Saville (Storey) 1975 - Heat and Dust (Jhabvala) 1974 - The Conservationist (Gordimer) 1974 - Holiday (Middleton) 1973 - The Siege of Krishnapur (Farrell) 1972 - G. (Berger) 1971 - In a Free State (Naipaul) 1970 - The Elected Member (Rubens) 1969 - Something to Answer For (Newby) Troubles (Farrell) also won the 'lost' Booker award for when changes to the admission process meant some books never had a chance to get nominated[ Pulitzer Prize winners Spoiler 1917: no award given 1918: His Family by Ernest Poole 1919: The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington 1920: no award given[3] 1921: The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton 1922: Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington 1923: One of Ours by Willa Cather 1924: The Able McLaughlins by Margaret Wilson 1925: So Big by Edna Ferber 1926: Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis (declined prize) 1927: Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield 1928: The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder 1929: Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin 1930: Laughing Boy by Oliver La Farge 1931: Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes 1932: The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck 1933: The Store by Thomas Sigismund Stribling 1934: Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Miller 1935: Now in November by Josephine Winslow Johnson 1936: Honey in the Horn by Harold L. Davis 1937: Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell 1938: The Late George Apley by John Phillips Marquand 1939: The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings 1940: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck 1941: no award given[4] For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway 1942: In This Our Life by Ellen Glasgow 1943: Dragon's Teeth by Upton Sinclair 1944: Journey in the Dark by Martin Flavin 1945: A Bell for Adano by John Hersey 1946: no award given 1947: All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren 1948: Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener 1949: Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens 1950: The Way West by A. B. Guthrie, Jr. 1951: The Town by Conrad Richter 1952: The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk 1953: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway 1954: No award given 1955: A Fable by William Faulkner 1956: Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor 1957: No award given[5] The Voice At The Back Door by Elizabeth Spencer 1958: A Death in the Family by James Agee (posthumous win) 1959: The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor 1960: Advise and Consent by Allen Drury 1961: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee 1962: The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O'Connor 1963: The Reivers by William Faulkner (posthumous win) 1964: No award given 1965: The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau 1966: The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter by Katherine Anne Porter 1967: The Fixer by Bernard Malamud 1968: The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron 1969: House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday 1970: The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford by Jean Stafford 1971: No award given[6] 1972: Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner 1973: The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty 1974: No award given[7] Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon 1975: The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara 1976: Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow 1977: No award given[8] A River Runs Through It by Norman MacLean Roots by Alex Haley (special Pulitzer Prize) 1978: Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson 1979: The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever 1980: The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer 1981: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (posthumous win) 1982: Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike 1983: The Color Purple by Alice Walker 1984: Ironweed by William Kennedy 1985: Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie 1986: Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry 1987: A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor 1988: Beloved by Toni Morrison 1989: Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler 1990: The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos 1991: Rabbit at Rest by John Updike 1992: A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley 1993: A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler 1994: The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx 1995: The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields 1996: Independence Day by Richard Ford 1997: Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser 1998: American Pastoral by Philip Roth 1999: The Hours by Michael Cunningham 2000: Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri 2001: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon 2002: Empire Falls by Richard Russo 2003: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides 2004: The Known World by Edward P. Jones 2005: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson 2006: March by Geraldine Brooks 2007: The Road by Cormac McCarthy 2008: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz 2009: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout 2010: Tinkers by Paul Harding 2011: A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan 2012: No award given.[9] Train Dreams by Denis Johnson Swamplandia! by Karen Russell The Pale King by David Foster Wallace (posthumous nominee) 2013: The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson 2014: The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt 2015: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr 2016: The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen[10] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liam Posted November 13, 2016 Author Share Posted November 13, 2016 Meant to put my thoughts in a lot earlier, but just haven't found the time. I plan - I think - to try and read all of the Booker Prize books at some point in the next few years. I've already read books like The Sense of An Ending, which was amazing, and Life of Pi and Disgrace, which were also really good. Hotel Du Lac was boring, boring, boring. Vernon God Little is fun and has an interesting narrator, though the ending is all just a bit too convenient. In my actual collection at the moment, I have quite a few of the other ones. I'm currently slogging my way through Rites of Passage - Golding doesn't really know how to do pithy. I've not read as many Pulitzer winners. A Visit from the Goon Squad was an excellent book with an interesting structure, whilst the Road was a harrowing, yet brilliant read. I own 'The Brief Life....', 'The Shipping News' and '...Kavalier and Clay' and perhaps a couple others. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cliff Hanger Posted November 13, 2016 Share Posted November 13, 2016 Bookers I've read: Life of Pi, Midnight's Children Pulitzers: The Age of Innocence, Arrowsmith, Old Man and the Sea, TKAM, Confederacy of Dunces, and I've started but never finished Grapes of Wrath, Kavalier and Clay, The Pale King Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liam Posted November 13, 2016 Author Share Posted November 13, 2016 17 minutes ago, Cliff Hanger said: Bookers I've read: Life of Pi, Midnight's Children Pulitzers: The Age of Innocence, Arrowsmith, Old Man and the Sea, TKAM, Confederacy of Dunces, and I've started but never finished Grapes of Wrath, Kavalier and Clay, The Pale King Thoughts on Midnight's Children? Never read it, but it was given the Booker's Booker award, effectively. Tried to read The Old Man and the Sea, but it just bored me for some reason. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cliff Hanger Posted November 13, 2016 Share Posted November 13, 2016 It's a really difficult read but ultimately pretty rewarding. I think it's also very much a product of its time. Deep as hell, though. Not a big fan of Old Man either; it was required reading when I was in grade 11. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
username Posted November 14, 2016 Share Posted November 14, 2016 Man I read... one of these (The Road BTW). I tried to read Gravity's Rainbow once but... well it's not what I'd call an easy read. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liam Posted November 14, 2016 Author Share Posted November 14, 2016 I own both a physical and electronic copy of Gravity's Rainbow. Read neither. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobholly138 Posted November 29, 2016 Share Posted November 29, 2016 Only read one off those lists. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon Had heard great stuff about it so checked it out from the local library.Damn good book. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JenniferPinkerton123 Posted June 19, 2017 Share Posted June 19, 2017 I think you will be interested, I found the best option. Look at here http://testurl.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Control Posted June 25, 2017 Share Posted June 25, 2017 16 Pulitzers (if I count ones named in the "no award given" years), but just four Bookers. A little embarrassing on both counts, given that I'm an English professor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liam Posted June 25, 2017 Author Share Posted June 25, 2017 10 hours ago, Control said: 16 Pulitzers (if I count ones named in the "no award given" years), but just four Bookers. A little embarrassing on both counts, given that I'm an English professor. I'm an English teacher and my record isn't great either. Award winning doesn't necessarily make something worth reading or even good. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OSJ Posted July 3, 2017 Share Posted July 3, 2017 Just looked at this for the first time in forever and was surprised to see that I have read a dozen or so Pulitzers and about half as many Bookers. Even more interesting to me is that I started another dozen and decided they were rubbish before reaching my ninety-page mark. (See, if I make it to ninety pages, you've got me intrigued enough that I'll stay for the ride, on the other hand, if you can't captivate me within ninety pages, either our tastes differ greatly or you can't write for shit.) There are a number of famous books that don't make the ninety page cut, notably a couple by Ayn Rand, mostly everything David Foster Wallace ever wrote and tons of literary jackoffery by Hemingway, Updike and others. Now, ask me about Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Bram Stoker winners and you'll get a completely different number of reads by me. Pretty sure I've read all the Hugo and Nebula winners, (even the crap by Orson Scott Card), and most of the World Fantasy and Stokers. The genre awards have actually done a much better job of not having laughably bad winners than you would expect. Doesn't mean that the right book always won, but there are very, very few WTF? were people thinking choices. I can even defend the oft-maligned They'd Rather Be Right by Clifton and Riley as a logical (if not the the right choice). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kuetsar Posted July 4, 2017 Share Posted July 4, 2017 In the non-fiction categories, I've read 12, and own at least 6 more. . . . 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OSJ Posted July 4, 2017 Share Posted July 4, 2017 3 hours ago, Kuetsar said: In the non-fiction categories, I've read 12, and own at least 6 more. . . . That does not surprise me in the least. I suspect that your non-fiction library is every bit the equal of my sf/horror/fantasy collection. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Contentious C Posted March 6, 2018 Share Posted March 6, 2018 Huh. I'm necro'ing this bad boy because, well, I'm a terrible person. I'm surprised the only Booker winner I've read is The English Patient - in equal parts because I haven't read some of the other "name" ones on the list like Midnight's Children or The Remains of the Day despite meaning to read them, and also because I'm surprised THAT won a Booker prize. I enjoyed it a great deal, but if I had to list the best books I've read from the last 25-30 years, I'm not sure I'd even remember it. And I've read, like, 20 non-scifi/fantasy books that have come out in my lifetime. The Pulitzers are the same old "stuff they showed us in school" everyone else has named...but the only one off that entire list I'd go back and re-read at the drop of a hat is All the King's Men. Mostly I bumped this because Ishiguro won the last Nobel, and I was surprised to find he did it off of, what, 6 novels? That said, the film versions of Remains and Never Let Me Go are two of the most heart-wrenching works I've ever seen, so I finally bought myself a copy of the latter to read and see what they left out of the film. I suspect I'll want to jump off a building by the end. Or perhaps in the middle, I don't know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liam Posted March 8, 2018 Author Share Posted March 8, 2018 I really didn't care much for Never Let Me Go. Interestingly, it is also a book that is on the English GCSE syllabus now in the UK. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Surprisingly Sincere Man Posted March 22, 2018 Share Posted March 22, 2018 2 Booker Prize winners - The Sense of an Ending, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (really enjoyed both) 3 Pulitzer Prize winners - The Age of Innocence, The Old Man and The Sea, The Road (preferred the Wharton over the others) Not a prize winner list, but the list I prefer to judge myself against is a 100 English language novels from The Guardian a couple of years ago - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/aug/17/the-100-best-novels-written-in-english-the-full-list There I've got 7 (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Dracula, Heart of Darkness, The Age of Innocence, Brave New World, The Big Sleep, Lord of the Flies) Not as many as I'd like, but I own about 40% of the books on there so will look to remedy that over time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liam Posted March 22, 2018 Author Share Posted March 22, 2018 1 hour ago, Surprisingly Sincere Man said: 2 Booker Prize winners - The Sense of an Ending, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (really enjoyed both) 3 Pulitzer Prize winners - The Age of Innocence, The Old Man and The Sea, The Road (preferred the Wharton over the others) Not a prize winner list, but the list I prefer to judge myself against is a 100 English language novels from The Guardian a couple of years ago - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/aug/17/the-100-best-novels-written-in-english-the-full-list There I've got 7 (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Dracula, Heart of Darkness, The Age of Innocence, Brave New World, The Big Sleep, Lord of the Flies) Not as many as I'd like, but I own about 40% of the books on there so will look to remedy that over time. Using that one: Frankenstein The Sign of Four The Picture of Dorian Gray The Great Gatsby Brave New World 1984 The Catcher in the Rye Lord of the Flies To Kill a Mockingbird Catch-22 Portnoy's Complaint Disgrace I own several others. Favourite one is probably Brave New World - didn't care much for The Sign of Four personally. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Contentious C Posted March 22, 2018 Share Posted March 22, 2018 I think I've read something like a quarter of that. Seems like whoever was doing the picking was trying to avoid having more than one work from a single author, else there might be more than one Nabokov or Faulkner on there (I didn't check the criteria, but I'm guessing that's part of it). And if Dracula is one of the 100 best novels written in English, I'm a goddamned romper-wearing pelican working a jackhammer. "Important"? I suppose. "Good"? Uhhhhhhhhhhhh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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