Reading the World - Best Books - Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 1918 - 2020

Who are my readers? How many of the Pulitzer Award Winning Fiction books have you read? I'm at 15 out of the 93. Pulitzer Prize announcement for 2021 has been postponed. It is expected to be announced this month.

Pulitzer Prize in Fiction 1918 to 2020

1918 - His Family by Ernest Poole

1919 - The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington

1920 - No Award

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

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 Lafarge

1931 - Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes

1932 - The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck

1933 - The Store by T. S. 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

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

1947 - All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren

1948 - Tales of the South Pacific by James 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 Аward

1955 - A Fable by William Faulkner

1956 - Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor

1957 - No Аward

1958 - A Death in the Family by James Agee

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 - 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 Аward

1972 - Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

1973 - The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty

1974 - No Аward

1975 - The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

1976 - Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow

1977 - No Аward

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

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 by Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

2009 - Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

2010 - Tinkers by Paul Harding

2011 - A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

2012 - No Аward

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 Viet Thanh Nguyen

2017 - The Underground Railroad Colson Whitehead

2018 - Less Andrew Sean Greer

2019 - The Overstory Richard Powers

2020 - The Nickel Boys Colson Whitehead

There are also Pulitzer Prizes awarded for General nonfiction, Biography and History.

2020 Final Tally

 Not a lot of foreign authors in my 2020 final tally but more diverse than the first posting.

My final tally for 2020 included 52 authors from 9 jurisdictions -

US = 31

UK = 12

Australia = 2

Ireland = 2

Canada, Iceland, Russia, Poland and Cyrus all had 1 each (Cyprus was actually a Dual Nationality - UK / Cyprus born in Cyprus and that was author Alex Michaelides).

One author, Patrick Ness, is a dual US / UK citizen born in the US but lives in London.  I included him as UK since he wrote the books from the UK.

So 59.6% were by American Authors while 90% were by Native English speakers.

What about gender?  I was surprised by the dominance of male authors.  There are 36 male authors represented and just 16 females.   So 69% were male authors.

I say surprised because many of my favorite authors are female.  But my reading list from 2020 (and indeed 2019 and 2018) came from "Best Book" lists as I am trying to finish reading books from the two lists - BBC Big Reads and Modern Libraries 20th Century with other books mixed in from Goodread lists or books I heard of from elsewhere.  

I will be interested to see how 2019 and 2018 compare.  

So far in 2021 I have completed 26 books but I haven't looked at those stats yet either as to nationality of the author nor whether they were male or female.  I will be making an effort in 2021 to read more "non-native English" authors so books written by authors NOT from one of the 6 native English speaking countries.

This morning I completed my own spreadsheet of world jurisdictions  with the authors / books compiled by https://ayearofreadingtheworld.com/thelist/.  I will try to add to that list and then start selecting books written by authors from jurisdictions from which I haven't yet read anything.

My reading in 2020

 I have started reviewing the 100 books I read in 2020 to see which authors I read and information about them. It appears I read books written by 52 different authors.  I alphabetized the list and started looking at where they were from and their gender.

The first 28 authors broke down as:

19 authors from the United States with 13 different States represented.  A couple of the authors were actually born abroad and one, Cassandra Clare appears to have moved around the world with her parents so I don't have a state assigned to her.  One of the 19 was Native American belonging to one of the Lakota Tribes (Sioux).

4 Authors were British, 2 were Irish, 2 were Irish and one was born in Cyprus but one parent is British.  I tentatively have them listed as being from Cyprus.  

Of those first 28, 20 were male and 8 female.

My mix of reading material in 2020 came from the BBC Big Read Top 200 list, Modern Library Best Novels of the 20th Century List, Goodread Best Authors and miscellaneous.

I plan to finish the statistics on 2020 but also look at 2019 and of course 2021.  

Who is your favorite Author that isn't British or American?

 I read a lot of books.  I am a verified bookworm.  How much of a bookworm?  I have an account at Goodreads .  It shows that in 2019, I read 106 books totalling 37,681 pages.  In 2020, the number of books completed fell to 100 but the pages increased to 40,583.  So far in 2021, I've read 26 books and 11,173 pages.  So in the past 25 1/2 months, I have completed 232 books and 89,437 pages.  Note - Covid19 has been responsible for me having time to read in 2020 and so far in 2021.

I largely read books today using my Kindle.  I'm one of those people who may have several books that I am reading switching between them.  Currently I think I have 9 books ongoing.  Let's face it, some books are easier to read than others.  And some times we are in the mood where we can read a book that requires thought and sometimes we just want to read something exciting even if it doesn't make sense logically.

My goal for 2021 is to finish reading the BBC The Big Read Top 100 or the Modern Library's Best 100 Novels of the 20th Century READERS List    or both.  I've read 93 of the Modern Library 100 and 90 of the BBC 100.

I have a Google Drive page that has my book lists.  Here is the link: Tim's Best Book Lists

BUT for now, I am interested in expanding my foreign author reading.  Since I am from the USA, I have probably read mostly American Authors.  A couple of years ago, I discovered a blog - A Year of Reading the World  and I am now in the process of taking their blog and seeing if I can read a book from every country as well - no idea how long that will take.

So I will try to review the books I have read recently (past few years) to identify which countries the authors are from for which I have already read books.  Currently I know I have read books by authors from:

Afghanistan
Australia
Belgium
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Brazil
Canada
Chile
China
Colombia
Denmark
Dominica
Egypt
France 
Germany
Iceland
Ireland
Jamaica  in progress
Japan
Mexico
Nigeria
Russia
Sweden 
Trinidad and Tobago
UK and 
USA

That is 25 Countries that I am aware of that I have read at least 1 book written by an author from that nation or locality. 

So any recommended Non-US, Non-UK, Non-Canadian authors?  Books that are written in or translated into English?

My goodreads account is https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/22491910-tim-new