December CAT Woman: Prize Winners

For this month’s CATWoman, we will be reading prize winning books written by women. There are many prizes to choose from, in many genres, hopefully you will find something that interests you. I’ve focused on the Women’s Prize for Fiction specifically, but there are many other awards to choose from such as the Pulitzer, National Book Award, Booker Prize, National Book Critic’s Circle Award, Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction, Costa Book Award, and the Newbery Medal, to name a few.

The wiki can be found here: https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/CATWoman_2022

Women’s Prize for Fiction
This prize is the UK’s most prestigious award celebrating fiction written by a female author of any nationality. This prize was also known as the Orange Prize for Fiction and Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction. This prize is awarded for a full-length novel in English written by a woman of any nationality. I am planning to read Hamnet, which won in 2020 and maybe if I can fit it in, The Road Home which won in 2008. The website with all of the prize winners appears below:

https://www.womensprizeforfiction.co.uk

Some of the winners of the awards listed above are:
The Round House (National Book Award)
Just Kids (National Book Award)
Sing Unburied Sing (National Book Award)
The Night Watchman (Pulitzer)
Breathing Lessons (Pulitzer)
A Visit from the Goon Squad (Pulitzer)
The Blind Assassin (Booker)
The Hand That First Held Mine (Costa)
Unsettled Ground (Costa)
Bel Canto (Pen /Faulkner)
The Buddha in the Attic (Pen/Faulkner)
Song of Solomon (National Book Critics Circle)
The Accidental Tourist (National Book Critics Circle)
Brown Girl Dreaming (Newbery)

Happy reading everyone!

I'm going to read H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald, which won the Samuel Johnson Prize (now the Baillie Gifford Prize) in 2014, and the Costa Book of the Year in 2014.

I'm going to read Happening by Annie Ernaux.

It also counts for November's Issues Seen Through Women's Eyes, so carries a lot of weight for a 51-page book.

If I can get to it, I think I'll read Piranesi by Susanna Clarke.

At the tail end of November, beginning of December I will be reading The Testaments by Margaret Atwood for my book club. It was co-winner of the Booker Prize for 2019.

>4 dudes22: Piranesi is fantastic!

>6 JayneCM: - I think it was you I took a BB from.

>>6 JayneCM: - I thought it might have been you I took a BB from, but I don't see it in your library. Well - it was somebody.

I think I will also read H is for Hawk. Been on my shelf for years!

I have a couple of books that I am thinking of reading in December for this. The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly is a 2010 Newbery Honor Medalist, and Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng was chosen as a 2017 Goodreads Choice Award winner and won an Indies Choice Book Award in 2018.

>8 dudes22: I did read it recently and reviewed it on my challenge thread. I log read books on Goodreads, I just use groups on here.

I read The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty, which won the Pulitzer Prize.

I have to read Nachts ist es leise in Teheran by Shida Bazyar for work soon, and I see that it has won several of the smaller German literature prizes, so it will work for this prompt.

I'm sure there is more on my tbr, but the quickest one I found is this:

Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant / Roz Chast

Looks like it won a "Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction" in 2014.

I just finished A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar, which won the World Fantasy Award.

Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? / Roz Chast
4.5 stars

This is a graphic novel telling of the author’s struggle as her parents aged. They didn’t like talking about death or any preparation for it, including any thought of moving someplace to make it easier for them to live – until they really had no other choice. Her parents both lived to their mid-90s and the cost of them living in the “Place” was taking a toll, in addition to her father’s mental issues and her mother’s physical ones.

It is a graphic novel, but not all pages include comic “strips”- some pages just have an illustration for the page, a few even have photographs of when Roz was cleaning out her parent’s house. A couple of pages include poems her mother wrote. She also includes some drawings she did of her mother in the months leading up to and including the day she died.

This was very well done, I thought. She included many thoughts and problems she had that are probably hard to talk about let alone publish in a book. It shows how hard it is to take care of parents as they age, and the personal struggles, especially when one’s relationship was not always great to begin with. Oh, the costs… wow, what a scary thought. What if your parents don’t have enough saved up to pay for the kind of care she was able to provide for her parents (and she had hard time with it)? What if you don’t have enough to help out? What happens when we get that age if we don’t have enough (and in my case, I don’t have kids to help, either)? Very very well done graphic novel.

I finished the phenomenal Hamnet yesterday. I don't think there is much I can say about the death of Shakespeare's 11 year old son, except that it was hard for me to put this book down. This novel won the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2020.

>16 LibraryCin: That sounds terrific, I'm going to have to look out for that.

>18 Jackie_K: I suspect it will make my favourites for this year. I hope you like it!

I'm planning to read Foster by Claire Keegan which won the Davy Byrnes Short Story Award (Irish) in 2009. It was recently recommended in an essay in the Washington Post books section.

>20 sallylou61: I ordered Foster from my library. Right now I'm #124 in line...so it will be some time before I get it. I read Small Things Like These earlier this year and it made quite an impact for such a little book.

>21 kac522:. I had put both Foster and Small Things Like These on hold at our public library, then decided to check on them at our local Barnes & Noble. I bought Foster; the store clerk could not find Small Things ... which was supposed to be in the store. When I finished Foster last night, I had a very uneasy feeling about it, feeling that it was sinister. After reading some positive reviews of it today, I reread it, and found it puzzling, especially the ending. However, short stories often end a way which leaves various interpretations possible. My copy of Foster, which is the complete story published Grove Press, includes 15 pages of excerpts from Small Things Like These.

>22 sallylou61: I would say Small Things Like These also has an open ending. I would not call it negative, but rather that what happens next (after the story ends) could go many different ways.

>22 sallylou61: I also felt uneasy, mainly because I assumed that a man who showed a child affection would turn out to be a paedophile. Perhaps we were meant to think about that assumption.

>24 pamelad: I felt the same uneasiness. I also wondered if the uncle had anything to do with his own son's death.

>25 sallylou61: I decided that I'd misjudged him and thought that any the cover-up was about leaving the well unsafe and almost losing the little girl.

Today I read The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories by Susanna Clarke. It is a collection of stories and the title one was part of an anthology called Starlight 1 that won the World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology in 1997. It takes place in the same world as her novel Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and she wrote the short while working on the longer book. I have bounced off that book two times and even tried to watch the TV series and just could not get into it. I will probably try again, because I did enjoy this collection.

>27 soelo: Glad to find that I'm not the only one who found Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell a struggle. I did finish it but it was definitely a case of I've started so I'll finish. And yet every other time I've seen comments about it they've always been very positive.

>28 Robertgreaves: It took me about a year to read it. I was bored. But then, I'm not a big fantasy fan, either (well, it depends on the type of fantasy).

I got halfway through Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer.
An asteroid hit the moon and knocked it out of orbit, closer to earth, creating natural disasters on our planet. Surprisingly, scientists didn't anticipate this possibility. Yes, Pfeffer's opening was terrific and some parts were almost believable, however, it quickly became a rant about how much the main character, teenage Miranda, misses chocolate chip ice cream or whatever. If there was any plot intended, it had disappeared mid-novel. The religious aspect was spectacularly mishandled. DNF

Although this is a DNF, I'm counting it as read because some credit is deserved for getting even halfway through this.

>30 VivienneR: - Can I ask what prize it won?

>31 dudes22: There are 26 awards listed on the main page for the book. So it looks like I'm definitely in the minority.

YA Science Fiction doesn't sound like your sort of thing. LT tells me I won't like Life as We Knew It either, which is not a surprise.

>33 pamelad: Sci-fi for any age is not my thing. I used to like it when I was young but it has changed a lot in modern times.

I finished The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate this morning. I really enjoyed this Newbery Awarded YA coming-of-age story.