Use this topic to comment on the various Pulitzer Prizes, including Fiction, Drama, History, Poetry, Biography, Non-Fiction, or Journalism. Also Music, on a less bookish note!

What, for instance, do you make of the fact that no Drama award was given in 2006?

I was very happy that Geraldine Brooks won the Pulitzer for fiction this year for March. I met her at a book signing a few weeks before it was announced. She's a very interesting person.

I agree that Brooks seems an interesting person, just as her husband Tony Horwitz does as well, and I enjoyed March quite a bit.

Well, I'm convinced - I don't have any Geraldine Brooks in my library at the moment, but I am going to seek out March (which for some reason isn't working properly as a touchstone).

I read Geraldine Brooks' first novel Year of Wonders and enjoyed it. Then I saw a fascinating interview with her on Australian TV so raced out to buy March. I hated it, but apparently I'm the only person in the world who did.

I agree with amandameale, I loved Year of Wonders, but really disliked March. I found the main character tepid and the story contrived. It may very well have been based on fact, but it wasn't alive for me.

I just received Year of Wonders through BookMooch, and after these recommendations I am eager to read it. Maybe I will move it up in my to-be-read queue.

Hate is a strong word for me, but I was very surprised at how weak I found March. I was unhappy with the main character, especially when compared to Little Women. I think Brooks conflated Jo March's father and Louisa May Alcott's father, where I think she should have only used the parts of Bronson Alcott that LMA decided to use when creating her character. Year of Wonders, on the other hand, was gripping and had strong characters.

Message edited by its author, Oct 8, 2006, 11:55am.

Funny, I had just the opposite opinion. I thought that although Year of wonders had great touches, it was only OK overall. I found March to be pretty powerful. Both are a bit contrived, with anachronistic personalities. But, that seems hard to avoid with historical fiction (I haven't really read that much of the genre).

OK. So, I liked both March and Year of Wonders, but can't bring myself to read Nine Parts of Desire (non-fiction. I also read the Doctorow March, by mistake, but it was also about the Civil War and also an award winner (Pen/Faulkner). I liked it, too.

A couple of summers ago I decided to try to read all of the Pulitzer plays, and I managed to get through a large portion of them. In general I thought they were quite good, with the exception of Our Town, which is either a joke or just a really crummy play. We must remember that the Pulitzer winners do not have to be GOOD, they just have to represent the best example of American life in a given year.

I read Nine Parts of Desire on the emphatic recommendation of my mother and grandmother, and found it absolutely fascinating. I have yet to read any of her other work, however.

My reading resolution is to read all of the Pulitzer fiction prize winners. I'm almost half way through them.

I'm currently reading The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk. I'm really enjoying it and finding it to be a refreshing change from familial angst which is more often than not the theme of the Pulitzers I've read.

Any one care to comment on your favorites and least favorites on this prize list?

Favourites that I can remember:
Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt; The Hours by Michael Cunningham; The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields; The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx; A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley; The Color Purple by Alice Walker; To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

I did not enjoy American Pastoral by Philip Roth - it was too unpleasant - perhaps it was my mood at the time.
Likewise March by Geraldine Brooks which I found utterly boring. The Known World by Edward P. Jones was quite good but I found the structure hard to take and did not finish it.

I think the touchstone situation is deteriorating - I've just reached a new low of zero.

I've been having major touchstone problems too and posted it on bugs and site issues. The load while I'm composing my message and then disappear.

The favorites you mentioned are similar to mine - I really liked The Stone Diaries and like you American Pastoral was trying. The best thing I can say about it is that I learned something about Newark and the glove business.

I also liked So Big by Edna Ferber, The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck and Advise and Consent by Allen Drury.

My least favorites include The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos, flimsy plot that went nowhere and Beloved by Toni Morrison I found difficult to follow.

Overall, though, I'm thoroughly enjoying this endeavor.

Monday's the day for the announcement of the Pulitzer winners for 2007 and since the committee never puts out a 'short list', it's almost always a surprise when the winners are named. It's anyone's good guess as to who might win, but were I forced to pick one title that I think has the inside track, it would have to be Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

The Pulitzer prize for fiction has been won by Cormac McCarthy's The Road, the award for General Non-Fiction was won by Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, and the History prize was won by Debby Applegate for The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher. No time to post the other winners but both John Coltrane and Ray Bradbury received Special Citations as well.

Nice call on the fiction prize, Louis!

I am struck with how few of the fiction prizes have gone to novels about women. I haven't studied this, of course; but I just looked back 18 years or so. One has to go back to 1989 and Anne Tyler's Breathing Lessons. Well, perhaps we can count Middlesex..er...sort of. Considering the recent track record, The Road was kind of predictable...imho, of course.

avaland, what percentage of the subset of books that would get looked at for this prize are written by women, any idea?

I have no idea, it's not published. It's not women writers, it's books ABOUT women. The previous two winners were women writers (oh, and I know they hate that phrase! they are writers, not "women writers") but their novels were about men.

Someday I shall do a study on this, really.

Message edited by its author, Apr 17, 2007, 8:02am.

A Thousand Acres was about women....and King Lear. :)

Message edited by its author, Apr 17, 2007, 8:35am.

Did I miss that one, was that before '89? I got a little dizzy bringing up each year one at a time, I kept repeating years...so, yes, I could've missed one. But is King Lear about the daughters or the king:-)

Well, King Lear didn't win the Pulitzer either way. :) I'd say it's about all, like Macbeth is about both the Mr. & Mrs.

A Thousand Acres is a retelling of it (Now that you mention it, I don't remember the year it was published - '89 hust doesn't seem that long ago!). It is told in first person by the oldest daughter, definitely focusing on the women of the story.

Message edited by its author, Apr 17, 2007, 9:57am.

King Lear is mainly about the king, but part of it is about his rejection of his youngest daughter Cordelia. Perhaps the connection to A Thousand Acres is that of a bad-tempered father showing favour or disfavour to one daughter? I have read it, I just remember the father as being horrible to everyone.

King Lear systematically rejects all three daughters. However, they are plotting and manipulative and deserve it. Huge parts of the play involve the daughters, especially Goneril. She is a much bigger figure in the play than Cordelia.

When somebody told me A Thousand Acres was a contemporary King Lear, I thought they meant it loosely. Then I read Lear. The connection to A Thousand Acres goes much farther than the relationship of a man to his youngest daughter. It is practically a scene-by-scene retelling, down to the lover and his relationship to both sisters. In both cases, the prodigal daughter comes home and stands by her meany dad. Even the poisoning of the middle sister plays a part (though here is where it changes) in Smiley's work. The body count is, of course, lower in ATA, but that makes it more relevant to the times. Another change is the children of the middle daughter.

Message edited by its author, Apr 18, 2007, 9:29am.

Jeepers, I read this book and apparently have a memory like a sieve these days!

I just checked and it won the Pulitzer in 1992, still it's been 15 years! Women authors have won since but the stories are not the stories of women's lives. So, if March had been about Marmee (and based on the life of Abbie May Alcott, longsuffering wife of the eccentric Bronson Alcott) and written equally well and deeply, would it have won a Pulitzer? If Gilead and The Road were about a mother and daughter instead of father and son, would they have won the Pulitizer?
Sadly, I think not. Even the Interpreter of Maladies is a man, is he not?

I'm listening to The Road on audio now and I'll hold my comments until I've finished. I'm enjoying the excellent, spare prose. What age did you assume the boy was, btw?

#19: When we have writers as great as Virginia Woolfe, or Anita Brookner, or Muriel Spark, or Elizabeth Bowen, or Iris Murdoch, or Sylvia Townsend Warner, or Sybille Bedford, or Penelope Lively, or Penelope Fitzgerald, or Ivy Compton-Burnett , or Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, or Christina Stead, or Alice Munro, or Alice Adams to name just some British or commnwealth or ex-commonwealth authors, maybe there will be more pulitzers for women. Our greatest unsung living author is Joyce Carol Oates who I think is discriminated against because she is so prolific, and writes as much as any 20 or 30 other authors. She should have had the Nobel prize years ago. Her work is noir, yes, but fantastically well written, and a mirror of much of our society. AND she is a poet, and a critic, and a professor, and a mystery writer as Rosamund Smith besides being a novelist.

Message edited by its author, Apr 18, 2007, 11:34am.

I think Oates should have won the Nobel Prize a long time ago, Philip Roth should have won too.

#26 & 27 Geez, my memory's no good either. I remember Cordelia from King Lear becauase she was the only daughter who was honest with him, but that's another story. (And perhaps that's wrong as well.)
#28 & 29 I've just been reading the list for the Booker International Prize for Fiction (see other thread) and you will find some women and Philip Roth on this list.

#30

I remember Cordelia from King Lear because she was the only daughter who was honest with him, but that's another story. (And perhaps that's wrong as well.)

That's right. She refused to play the fawn-over-dad game, so she was rejected. then she disappears from the play until the very end. That's why it's sometimes more fun to play the villain than the 'sympathetic' character. Well, that's only one of the reasons it's more fun...:)

>msg 19 I am struck with how few of the fiction prizes have gone to novels about women.

1995 -- The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields

>msg 19 I am struck with how few of the fiction prizes have gone to novels about women.

1995 -- The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields

Must've missed that one also. So, the stats are better than I feared but still the trend of the last few years strikes me as a bit of a trend...but perhaps it is just me...

i've got to put a plug in for michael shaara's "the killer angels" (1975) because he's the only pulitzer winner who was a friend of mine. hoohah!

i took classes from him from 1970 through june, 1972, and in the spring of 1972 he read to us from his current manuscript about Longstreet surveying the battlefield. I had no idea I was listening to a future Pulitizer winner. The book went on to be used as a primer for the US Army Command and General Staff College and his son, Jeff, has done well with his own war novels.

The Killer Angels is great - definitely one of the best historical fiction books on the Civil War. I have reread it more than once, and will undoubtedly read it again. I thought the movie based on this book (titled "Gettysburg") was also better than most.

You know, I have tried Phillip Roth and Oates and could not wade through either one. It was in my youth and maybe I should try again, but I just found them so darn wordy.

Just finished On Beauty by Zadie Smith and I liked it well enough that I am reading White Teeth.
I have several more Pulizers lined up to read.

Zadie Smith surely hasn't won the Pulitzer, has she?
I thought it was only for U.S. citizens...

Sorry, meant for other group, 1001 Books

Sorry from me too - I wasn't trying to catch you out, I was just a very confused European for a while there!

I am often confused. Some days I wonder how I find my way to work. Also belong to too many groups.

the Stone Diaries was this weeks book, and I felt pretty depressed at the end. Is growing old, dependent and dying all we have to look forward to? The book was very readable, and I enjoyed it, but there weren't really any feel good moments involved.

I thought the Stone Diaries was a good read but not a prize winning book. It just did not have any innovative or exceptional ideas to it. I liked it. I did not think it was a new classic.

Personally, I think the best winner of the Pulitzer in the past few years has been Michael Chabon. Now there is a good writer!

Dammit Karen! Now I have to buy a book by Michael Chabon and I was trying not to buy at all.

Sorry to add more fuel to the fire, Amanda, but I'll second Karen on the Chabon kudos--he's one of my favorite authors.

Amanda - if the book buying thingy is soooo bad - I can send you my copy? Leave me a message if you want it.

#47 Thank you Karen but I assure you, I always enjoy buying a book.

Just coming by to wave - I am participating in a Pulitzer book challenge, and I am enjoying the comments about prize winners here on this thread.

I am currently reading Empire Falls by Richard Russo. Very enjoyable so far - but I am waiting for the "umphh" to kick in. =)

I loved Empire Falls. I thought it was one of the best of the Pulitzers that I have read so far. I was interested in the link provided in message 49, but on a government computer and can't access from here.
I am reading two Pulitzers at the same time. Martin Dressler is my day time book and Kavalier and Clay is my bathtub/bedtime book. I just finished The known World which is really good also.
I am surprised at how many good books I have missed over the years.

I am enjoying Empire Falls too. I hope you can check out the Pulitzer Project challenge I linked in message #49. It's a great way to motivate yourself to read more Pulitzers. It is amazing how many good books I have missed too over the years! But boy am I catching up now! =)

I am getting the books in the mail faster than I can read them. I got Shipping News yesterday.

The 2008 Pulitzer winner (and the finalists considered) will be announced on April 7. Any thoughts on who will win this year?

Here are three that I think might win:

* The Maytrees by Annie Dillard
* Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
* The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz

> 54

One out of three! (Diaz won.)

I can't believe Tracy Letts won, though. I've never been terribly impressed by his plays, though I suppose the Steppenwolf connection helps him.

Glad to see that John Kass, although nominated for Commentary, didn't win. He never lets a fact get in the way of his bias, and he never heard of gray.

Message edited by its author, Apr 7, 2008, 3:23pm.

For everyone:

Winner: The brief and wondrous life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
(congratulations to 3M3m, your prize cookie is in the mail)

Other nominees:
Tree of smoke by Denis Johnson
Shakespeare's Kitchen by Lore Segal

Well the whole thing is certainly male dominated isn't it.

I believe Lore Segal is female, though historically you are quite right.

Message edited by its author, Apr 9, 2008, 12:57pm.

Of t he 83 Pulitzers for fiction, counting this year, by my count 22 are women and I admit to maybe having missed one or two, not being familiar with the names. The third winner was a woman, Edith Wharton, and women were rather well represented--until a long spell from 1938 to 1960 when the only winners were men. However, the prize wasn't awarded in every year. Then, after that, women appear again. Haven't looked at the list long enough to decided if they have been as prevalent winners after 1960 as before--my impression is no, but that's just an impression.

Lore Segal is a woman; in fact, I've met her. She wrote some great books, including Other People's Houses and Her First American, so I was very excited about Shakespeare's Kitchen since she hadn't written anything for adults in years. It was good, but not as good as I had hoped and not, in my opinion, Pulitzer material (although the earlier books would have been).

One of the interesting things about the Pulitzer criteria is NOT that it's "the best book of the year" but that it is the most distinguished full-length piece of fiction (although collections of stories have won) by an American author, preferably dealing with American life published the previous year. The "preferably" saved Annie Proulx, in my opinion, with The Shipping news, which was hardly about American life although it had a more or less American protagonist.

I've also read somewhere that maybe an informal criterion is that the work is the one that best represents American life/culture for that year. That doesn't appear, however, in the formal list from Columbia University.

So, maybe the judges felt that Segal for last year deserved nomination, given the "competition".

I've been reading thru the Pulitzer winners from teh first one, and am now on 1925 (having read some others from later on as well), and I'll tell you, the apparent quality does vary. and rebeccanyc, in the same vein that you're talking about, Willa Cather won in 1923, I think, for One of Our own, which was very good--but if I had my choice, it would be Death Comes for the Archbishop. But who knows what the pool was or the judges or any other factor involved? In 1923, a story about a Nebraska boy volunteering for the American Expeditionary Force and his experiences in World War I would have been popular, I would think.

My response to the announcement of the Pulitzer winner this year was: "Yet another book about a man's life."

If you look at even the winners which were written by women an extraordinary percentage of them are about men. Not sure we included content on the separate older thread where we discussed the gender parity of the awards. . .

Very true, avaland, very true. I can't remember all of them, but maybe half of the ones written by women were about women's lives, and that's probably stretching it. And I would include there Age of Innocence, even though the story is ostensibly about a man. That book seems to defy categories.

avaland, I didn't do a page breakdown but I'd say around half of this year's winner is about Oscar's mother (and sister). Maybe more. A lot of readers liked her story better than they liked Oscar's.

Still, the title is Oscar's, isn't it? I think one has to go back as far as 1995 when The Stone Diaries to get a female protagonist (unless you count part of Middlesex, and ultimately 'she' chose to be a 'he'). If you don''t count that, that's 13 years. One would think the trend would go the other way . . .

If we haven't posted the whole list yet:

Fiction

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)
1955 A Fable by William Faulkner
1956 Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor
1957 (No Award)
1958 A Death In The Family by the late James Agee (a posthumous publication)
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
1964 (No Award)
1965 The Keepers Of The House by Shirley Ann Grau
1966 Collected Stories 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 Collected Stories by Jean Stafford
1971 (No Award)
1972 Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
1973 The Optimists Daughter by Eudora Welty
1974 (No Award)
1975 The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
1976 Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow
1977 (No Award)
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 the late John Kennedy Toole (a posthumous publication)
1982 Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike, the latest novel in a memorable sequence
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

(sorry, no patience for touchstones this evening; may come back and do it on another day)

Actually, the prize for "fiction" goes back to 1918, only it was for a "novel"; Columbia University changed it to "fiction", probably in 1948.

I think that some of the books are really hard to classify. What do you say about The Yearling? Or To Kill a Mockingbird? These are really about children. Or, for that matter, the first winner His Family--which is far, far more about Roger Gale's 3 grown daughters--written surprisingly sympathetically about 3 very different personalities--than about Gale himself. Or The Able McLaughlins, which is more or less formally about a young couple, but there is a mother in there who is incredibly strong and almost as important as the couple themselves.

Also, avaland, are you talking about the most recent winners? Because there are female protagonists in your list pre-1995--maybe more than I know, because I'm not familiar with the collected works of Porter or Stafford or some other books. I'm confused by your time reference (but then I'm easily confused!)

I simply don't know enough about too many of the winners, but it seems to me that it's a little hard to make definitive categorizations about gender of protagonist.

As I mentioned in a previous post, there was a long dry spell when no women won the prize. But again, there are too many I know nothing about to talk about content.

62: That's because men are more important.

:)

Avaland: I think the awards are spot on for getting the important writers such as Faulkner, Hemingway, Bellow, Roth, Malamud and Updike among the men, and Toni Morison, Annie Proulx, Katharine Anne Porter, Jane Smiley, Eudora Welty, Alice Walker, Jean Stafford, Carol Sheilds, and Anne Tyler among the women.

Important women writers that were left out in the period, imo, were Flannery O'Connor, Carson McCullers, Hortense Calisher, Shirley Jackson and Grace Paley.
Edited to ask if Edith Wharton ever won? or Ellen Glasgow?

Message edited by its author, Apr 14, 2008, 4:38am.

Pearl Buck won a Nobel Prize. Did she ever win a Pulitzer?
I would consider Jessamyn West as an important woman writer (1940-1960)

#62 Yes, I see you there Shortride.
What everyone needs is a copy of Great Housewives of Art by Sally Swain.

Interestingly - women were better represented between the wars:

1947: All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
1946: no award given
1945: A Bell for Adano by John Hersey
1944: Journey in the Dark by Martin Flavin
1943: Dragon's Teeth by Upton Sinclair
1942: In This Our Life by Ellen Glasgow
1941: no award given
1940: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
1939: The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
1938: The Late George Apley by John Phillips Marquand
1937: Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
1936: Honey in the Horn by Harold L. Davis
1935: Now in November by Josephine Winslow Johnson
1934: Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Miller
1933: The Store by Thomas Sigismund Stribling
1932: The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
1931: Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes
1930: Laughing Boy by Oliver La Farge
1929: Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin
1928: The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder
1927: Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield
1926: Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis (declined prize)
1925: So Big! by Edna Ferber
1924: The Able McLaughlins by Margaret Wilson
1923: One of Ours by Willa Cather
1922: Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington
1921: The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
1920: no award given
1919: The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington
1918: His Family by Ernest Pool

>thanks, jargoneer, I did notice that (women winners), and thanks for posting the older winners (I hadn't even noticed the list didn't include them all!). It would be an interesting study to know how many have outright female protagonists, but perhaps another day:-)

>joycepa, sorry about the confusion with the time reference. Perhaps it is better said as: To the best of my knowledge, there have been no female protagonists since 1995. I did have to look up the synopses for a few of the titles I was less familiar with to be sure.

Hello:

I have just finished listening to Thousand Acres in audiobook format. Is there anyone who remembers the book, who would like to talk about it. It is ONE peculiar book, I think.

The Pulitzer Prizes will be announced on April 20. Anyone have any guesses on what will win?

Friday's Christian Science Monitor has an article about a regression analysis based model built to predict which books would be most likely to win the prize. The web site can be found here. Last year's model ranked the winner, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, #3, and a finalist, Tree of Smoke, #5.

These are the 15 books the model predicted, in order of probability:

1. Home by Marilynne Robinson
2. The Widows of Eastwick by John Updike
3. Indignation by Philip Roth
4. The Lazarus Project by Aleksander Hemon
5. Fine Just the Way it is by Annie Proulx
6. The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich
7. A Mercy by Toni Morrison
8. Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
9. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
10. Dangerous Laughter by Steven Millhauser
11. Telex from Cuba by Rachel Kushner
12. Netherland by Joseph O'Neill
13. My Sister, My Love by Joyce Carol Oates
14. Lush Life by Richard Price
15. Our Story Begins by Tobias Wolff

Of these, I would rate the 4 books I've read this way:

1. Netherland
2. Lush Life
3. The Plague of Doves
4. Indignation

Of course, this is meaningless since I've only read 4 of the 15 listed and since I would have given last year's award to Tree of Smoke.

2009 Pulitzer Prize winners:

Fiction - Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (Random House)

Drama - Ruined by Lynn Nottage

History - The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed

Biography - American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham

Poetry - The Shadow of Sirius by W.S. Merwin

General Nonfiction - Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon

Music - Double Sextet by Steve Reich, premiered March 26, 2008 in Richmond, VA

Finalists for the 2009 Pulitzer Prizes:

Fiction
The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich
All Souls by Christine Schutt (Harcourt)

Drama
Becky Shaw by Gina Gionfriddo
In The Heights by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes

History
The Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust
The Liberal Hour: Washington and the Politics of Change in the 1960s by G. Calvin Mackenzie and Robert Weisbrot

Biography or Autobiography
Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt by H.W. Brands
The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century by Steve Coll

Poetry
Watching the Spring Festival by Frank Bidart
What Love Comes To: New & Selected Poems by Ruth Stone

General Nonfiction
Gandhi and Churchill: The Epic Rivalry That Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age by Arthur Herman
The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europe by William I. Hitchcock

Music
7 Etudes for Solo Piano by Don Byron
Brion by Harold Meltzer

Message edited by its author, Apr 20, 2009, 3:40pm.

Thanks kidzdoc! For once I've read fiction winner before it won, although I my opinions were mixed on it.

I did read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao before it won the 2008 prize. I haven't purchased or read Olive Kitteridge yet. What did and didn't you like about it, Dan?

I read it in January 2008, so my memory isn't sharp. I don't know that there was anything specific I didn't like. I did admire Strout's subtleties, much of which I probably missed. It's a collection of loosely connected short stories. Many of the early stories felt very soft to me, and finally one story drove me nuts (A Different Road) so I put down to read something else. I enjoyed the last several stories when I picked it up again...I guess just, overall, I felt it didn't have much of an effect on me.

There have been a lot of positive comments on LT, I'm just one reader.

Those comments are helpful; thanks, Dan. I may pass on this one.

I can't comment on Olive Kitteridge since I haven't read it, or on the runner-up by Christine Schutt, but even though I enjoyed it, I wouldn't have considered A Plague of Doves a runner-up in a year with much other good fiction.

I started Olive Kitteridge a couple of weeks ago but put it to the side. I've intended to pick it back up, but it just hasn't called to met yet. I don't tend to be a big fan of short stories anyway but I will definitely make sure to give it another go soon.

#84 It's not a set of short stories.
I liked Olive Kitteridge very much but I'm surprised it's the winner.

Olive Kittredge was one of my favorite reads of the year. I can't say I'm familiar with much of the competition, but on a personal level I am pleased that Strout won the prize. And I agree with amandameale; it should be read as an entity, not as a collection of individual stories.

Thanks for the advice to read Olive as a whole. Maybe that's where I was going wrong!

I'm in the middle of Olive Kitteridge right now and I'm glad to heard mixed feelings here. I have also put it aside for a while. Slow and depressing are how I would describe it so far. I just wrote in another post, it wasn't calling to me either. I don't normally read short stories but I did love Unaccustomed Earth. I will finish Olive Kitteridge, maybe I will also enjoy the last few stories better. It is kind of neat to have been reading this before it was announced, I feel quite in the know.

After I read Hotel Honolulu for a book discussion group at church I read a lot of reviews of the book, and they were pretty polarized. I ran across a review of reviews that said that the reviewers who didn't like the book had mostly read it as a series of short stories while the reviewers who did like the book had mostly read it as the narrator's tale. That seemed true to me. I had unwittingly read it as the latter and enjoyed the work.

I have put Olive Kitteridge on my Barny Noble wish list.

Robert