I DID IT!: A Personal Account of How it Feels to Win the Pulitzer Prize...Sort Of

I love the Pulitzer Prizes.  I mean really, really love them; especially the prize for fiction. It's my favorite literary prize.  Ami thinks it's weird to have a favorite literary prize.  But I don't care, I do have a favorite, and it's this one.

One of the only book-related things I love more than the fiction Pulitzer (at least currently) is Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch.  It's possible I've mentioned this a time or two (still waiting on that commission check).  Actually, Goldfinch is in my top four all-time favorite books. These are the books I know I will always love, no matter what happens in my life or how my reading tastes change; these books will always be special.  It might seem weird to have a top four; why four, why not five?  Because it's my list and that's just how elite and magical the list is.

I love The Goldfinch so much that when I finished it, I couldn't find anything else to read, so I just read it again. It's the kind of book that destroys any aspirations I've ever had of being a writer because I could not possibly write anything that spectacular.  Love isn't a strong enough word for how I feel.  I'm a little insane for The Goldfinch.

Given these feelings, of course I wanted it to win the Pulitzer.  But I didn't really think it would.  As much as I love the award, I have never predicted the winner.  I've never even read the winner before it's been announced...

UNTIL THIS YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I could not be more pleased!  Just look at how happy I am! On the day the prizes were announced I marched around the store all afternoon chanting, "GOLDFINCH, GOLDFINCH!"  It's as if my favorite sports team finally won a championship.  You Seahawks fans get me, right?  And I feel weirdly vindicated over some of the more nasty reviews (I'm looking at you Francine Prose).  It's like I won the prize, even though I did nothing but read it, and love it, and recommend it to customers, and then buy many, many copies to give to friends and family (seriously, Donna, did that check get lost in the mail?).

So why does it matter to me?  

It's funny, but there is a unique vulnerability in being a bookseller.  Books aren't just our job, books are a fundamental part of our lives.  I challenge you to find a bookseller anywhere who doesn't consider reading to be their passion, or at least their favorite hobby.  Sometimes the book we're recommending means a lot to us; sometimes it's on our Super-Awesome, Mega-Elite, Best Books Ever List; sometimes the book we're recommending has changed our life.  And that's a pretty personal thing.  We're not just trying to sell you any old book, we're handing you something important to us, hoping it will be important to you too.  

So when I recommend a book I love to someone, and they don't love it back...heartbreak! One of my favorite customers did not love The Goldfinch, and I was honestly a little devastated.  But if I recommend a book I love and they love it too, it feels great. And when something like this happens, when a book I love so fiercely is honored with a big award; well, that feels a little magical.  But it's not unlike the feeling I get when you buy a book I think you'll like, and when you come back and tell me how much it meant to you. I guess, in some strange way, that's why I feel this Pulitzer win so deeply.

Of course, now I face a dilemma.  Usually my mid-April reading is decided by the prize announcement (except in 2012 when there was no fiction winner, and I spiraled into a Pulitzer-induced depression).  What do I read now?  I suppose I could dip into the older winners I haven't read yet.  I was thinking maybe the 1919 winner The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington or maybe I should finally read The Age of Innocence... 

Oh, who am I kidding, I'm just going to read The Goldfinch again.

Posted by Erin B.

2014 Pulitzer Prize Winners

Announced today... here are the Pulitzer winners for 2014!

  Fiction

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Biography

Margaret Fuller: A New American Life by Megan Marshall

History

The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832 by Alan Taylor

Poetry

3 Sections by Vijay Seshadri

General Nonfiction

Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation by Dan Fagin 

2013 Pulitzer Prize Winners

Just announced...here are the 2013 Pulitzer Prize winners

FICTION - The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson 

DRAMA - Disgraced by Ayad Akhtar 

HISTORY - Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam by Fredrik Logevall

BIOGRAPHY - The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss

POETRY - Stag's Leap by Sharon Olds 

GENERAL NONFICTION - Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America by Gilbert King

Head here for more information including the journalism winners, and finalists for all categories.  I'm really happy to see Eowyn Ivey's Snow Child as a fiction finalist.  Congratulations to all!

Final Pulitzer Prediction List

Here's the final fiction prediction list from Pulitzer Prize First Edition:

1. Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain
2. A Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers
3. The Round House by Louise Erdrich
4. The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson
5. This is How you Lose Her by Junot Diaz
6. Magnificence by Lydia Millet
7. The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers
8. Canada by Richard Ford
9. Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon
10. Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club by Benjamin Saenz
11. Blasphemy by Sherman Alexie
12. Battleborn by Claire Vaye Watkins
13. One Last Thing Before I Go by Jonathan Tropper
14. Dog Stars by Peter Heller
15. Watergate by Thomas Mallon

Looks like Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is still holding strong.  I must say, I'm super excited to see Battleborn by Claire Vaye Watkins make the list.  I think it's my most favorite book-that I didn't totally love.  It's a complex relationship, but I can't wait to see what else she'll do.  Here's my review.

Reviewing this book is tough. Another review somewhere said, "Watkins shows promise." I think that's a great way to describe this debut collection. I liked some of these stories, loved one or two, and was frustrated by several.

Sometimes I really trusted Watkins, was drawn in by her obvious need to find hope in the hopeless. But then her genuineness would slip away and reveal an author working too hard at being provocative, when in truth she is at her most provocative (and genuine) when the subjects aren't so "edgy". Sure, sex and violence and drugs and prostitution and infidelity are edgy, but a story doesn't become provocative simply by their inclusion. Not surprisingly, Watkins is at her best when she isn't working so hard; try Graceland and The Diggings. For most of this book I just wanted her to get out of her own way, because she does have such...you know, promise.

But, what she does do well, she does really well. And what she does well, is write about the desert. For as much as a story would be pissing me off, it would be dragging me in with the smell of creosote, the shimmer of heat waves, and that great, big, western sky stretching on for miles. The desert does something to you, burrows in and never leaves. And to be able to capture that and the raw ache and emptiness of missing the desert when not there; that, I find remarkable. Watkins is a child of the desert and writes it well.

I don't think I've ever agonized so much over a review for a book I thought was just 'pretty good.' I read these stories compulsively, and if the first part of this review doesn't indicate that, it's because I think they could be so much better. I think she could be really great. Very much looking forward to more.

Pulitzer Predictions

I know you know how much I love the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.  If you don't know, you can read about my love here.  How devastated was I last year after being denied my favorite literary prize?  Inconsolable.  I went on a bit of a nonfiction, revenge binge.  So here's hoping that this year the fiction jury doesn't let me down.

As they have every year since 2008, the folks at Pulitzer Prize First Edition have started on their prediction list.  In 2011, they correctly predicted that A Visit From the Goon Squad would be the big winner.  And last year they had 2 of the 3 finalists on their final prediction list.

The final predictions don't come out until March (the prize is awarded in April), but they have put together a preliminary list that is up now.  Here is where it currently stands:


1. Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain
2. A Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers
3. The Round House by Louise Erdrich
4. Magnificence by Lydia Millet
5. The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson
6. The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers
7. This is How you Lose Her by Junot Diaz
8. Blasphemy by Sherman Alexie
9. The Beginner's Goodbye by Anne Tyler
10. Home by Toni Morrison
11. San Miguel by T. Coraghassan Boyle
12. In One Person by John Irving
13. Schmidt Steps Back by Louis Begley
14. Mudwoman by Joyce Carol Oates
15. Canada by Richard Ford

The early list and the final prediction list usually vary quite a bit, so be sure to check back in March for the last word.  I will say, I know a lot of Third Place booksellers who would be very pleased to see Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk take home the big win.

Pulitzer Prizes Announced

Wow.  The Pulitzer Prizes were announced today.  And everyone is stunned (or at least I am) that there was no prize awarded in the fiction category.  It's the first time since 1977 that there has been no fiction award.  However, the Pulitzer Board did reveal the finalists for fiction, I guess it was the least they could do.  The nominated finalists were Train Dreams, by Denis Johnson; Swamplandia! by Karen Russell; and The Pale King, by the late David Foster Wallace.  Seems in this case it might not have been an honor just to be nominated...

Other (actual) winners include:

Drama:  Water by the Spoonful by Quiara Alegría Hudes

History:  Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, by the late Manning Marable

Biography or Autobiography:  George F. Kennan: An American Life by John Lewis Gaddis

Poetry:  Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith

General Nonfiction:  The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt

I"m especially disappointed as the Pulitzer fiction prize is my favorite book prize.  I guess I'll just have to read all the finalists and choose for myself.  That being said, if I were awarding the prize it would go to the Tiger's Wife, by Tea Obreht.

Posted by Erin B.

An Oldie but a Goodie

Maybe, like me, you've seen Angle of Repose sitting on the shelf for so many years that it's faded into the scenery. But that is one of the reasons this book is so great. It may not LEAP off the shelf but rather it burrows, warm and soft, into your soul as it quietly tells it's story. And oh, what a story it is! Thoughtful, engaging, sad, uplifting, and so, so very readable. Do yourself a favor and stop ignoring this quiet piece of classic American literature and find out for yourself why this book won the Pulitzer and continues to show up on "best of" lists year after year.

Posted by Autumn

Pulitzer Winners and Finalists Announced Monday

FICTION: 
Tinkers, by Paul Harding

Finalists: Love in Infant Monkeys, by Lydia Millet; In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, by Daniyal Mueenuddin.

DRAMA:
Next to Normal, music by Tom Kitt; book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey.

Finalists: The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, by Kristoffer Diaz; Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, by Rajiv Joseph; “In the Next Room (or the vibrator play),” by Sarah Ruhl.


HISTORY:
Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World, by Liaquat Ahamed

Finalists: Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City, by Greg Grandin; Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815, by Gordon S. Wood.

BIOGRAPHY:
The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt,” by T.J. Stiles

Finalists: Woodrow Wilson: A Biography, by John Milton Cooper Jr.; Cheever: A Life, by Blake Bailey

POETRY:
Versed, by Rae Armantrout

Finalists: Tryst, by Angie Estes; Inseminating the Elephant, by Lucia Perillo.

GENERAL NONFICTION:
The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy, by David E. Hoffman

Finalists: How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities, by John Cassidy; The Evolution of God, by Robert Wright.

Updated Pulitzer Hopefuls

Here is the newly updated list of Pulitzer Prize for fiction predictions from PPrize.com.  It doesn't look too different from their initial list except one less Joyce Carol Oates title, and the order is a tiny bit different. 

1.  My Father's Tears: And Other Stories by John Updike 
2. Lark & Termite by Jayne Anne Phillips 
3. Homer & Langley by E.L. Doctorow 
4. The Humbling by Philip Roth 
5. Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann 
6. The Maple Stories by John Updike 
7. American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell 
8. Spooner by Pete Dexter 
9. Generosity: An Enhancement by Richard Powers 
10. In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin 
11. The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver 
12. A Good Fall by Ha Jin 
13. The Red Convertible by Louise Erdrich 
14. Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem 
15. Dear Husband by Joyce Carol Oates

My progress through the Pulitzer possibles has been disrupted by a recent bout of American Lit. Classics that I have been unable to put down.  But, I have read a few of the remarkable short stories in American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell.  Stark, vivid, and compelling, these are not for the faint of heart.  Set in Michigan, Campbell's stories chronicle the decay of morality and the American Midwest.  Abuse, drug use and poverty abound, and should it win the big award, I think American Salvage will make the perfect compliment to last year's far sunnier winner, Olive Kitteridge.

Pulitzer Predicament

The Pulitzer Prize for fiction is my all-time favorite literary prize, and past winners invariably wind up on my to-read and re-read lists. The only small thing that irks me is the lack of a shortlist before the prize is announced. Christy, a fellow bookseller, feels about the Booker Prize the way I feel about the Pulitzer, and this year I will admit to a little jealousy as she bounded around the store on the day the Booker shortlist was announced. On one hand the Pulitzer race is always exciting and filled with speculation, but on the other, there seems to be no way to prepare. I want to be able to read all the contenders in order to make an informed decision in the same way that people watch all the Best Picture nominees before Oscar night.

Well, this year, I may have an answer to my problem. For the past two years, Pulitzer Prize First Edition Guide has made a prediction list, and the 2008 and 2009 winners and finalists have been on those lists. This year they are producing two lists; one, which was released in late January, and a more concise list to be released in March as the prize draws nearer. Here are their current predictions below:

My Father's Tears: And Other Stories, by John Updike
Lark and Termite, by Jayne Anne Phillips
Homer and Langley, by E.L. Doctorow
The Humbling, by Philip Roth
The Maples Stories, by John Updike
American Salvage, by Bonnie Jo Campbell
Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann
In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, by Daniyal Mueenuddin
The Red Convertible, by Louise Erdrich
Chronic City, by Jonathan Lethem
A Good Fall, by Ha Jin
Dear Husband, by Joyce Carol Oates
Little Bird of Heaven, by Joyce Carol Oates
Spooner, by Pete Dexter
The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver
Generosity: An Enhancement, by Richard Powers

And click here for more on how their predictions are made.

I myself am going to jump into American Salvage and In Other Rooms, Other Wonders. I can't wait!

Posted by Erin