Last week, Jennifer Egan won the 2011 fiction Pulitzer for A Visit from the Goon Squad. Does this mean I should quit bad-mouthing her second novel Look at Me? Seriously, I didn't like it. But she has received quite a lot of praise for her novel The Keep as well as Goon Squad. The Keep is in my reading queue currently (actually, the audiobook is my exercising MP3 player, but it isn't getting a lot of use these days). So, I'd better add another one to my list.I will definitely have to read Goon Squad, but it got me thinking about what other Pulitzer winners I have yet to read. Below is the list of fiction winners since 1990--the ones in bold I have actually read:
2010 - The Tinkers by Paul Harding
2009 - Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
2008 - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz
2007 - The Road by Cormac McCarthy
2006 - March by Geraldine Brooks
2005 - Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
2004 - The Known World by Edward P. Jones
2003 - Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
2002 - Empire Falls by Richard Russo
2001 - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
2000 - Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
1999 - The Hours by Michael Cunningham
1998 - American Pastoral by Philip Roth
1997 - Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser
1996 - Independence Day by Richard Ford
1995 - The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
1994 - The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
1993 - A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler
1992 - A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
1991 - Rabbit At Rest by John Updike
1990 - The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos
Just six in the last twenty years. I'd better get reading.
I've only read 1 out of the 22 (The Road) so you're much better-read than I am. The only others I have any interest in reading are Egan, Robinson, Eugenides and Chabon.
ReplyDeleteI realize now that I forgot to highlight Richard Ford's Independence Day as read. So, seven.
ReplyDeletePete, they are a few here I would skip, but I would suggest that you add American Pastoral to your list as well. It ranks pretty high on my list of favorite books. Below McCarthy, of course.