Pulitzer Prize Winners Announced

Today the 2009 Pulitzer Prizes were announced at Columbia University. I think most readers have come to expect a lot from the Pulitzers as they have a pretty good track record.

Over the years, they've given awards to some of the best writers under the sun including Alice Walker, Cormac McCarthy, Philip Roth, Richard Ford, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Eudora Welty, and the list goes on.

This year, the winning book in fiction is Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (which was named, a few months ago, a National Books Critics Circle Award finalist). Olive Kitteridge tells the story of a seventh-grade math teacher, and in addition the these awards, it's received strong reviews like this one.

The poetry winner for this year is The Shadow of Sirius by W.S. Merwin. If you're interested in poetry (and April is National Poetry Month), you can read about Merwin here. Even better, you can check out one of his poems, "Yesterday," here. (Warning: It's terribly sad).

If you'd like to see a complete list of this year's winners, click here.

NBCC Award Winners

Last week, the National Book Critics Circle announced its winners for 2008.

According to their website, the National Book Critics Circle "is a non-profit organization consisting of more than 900 active book reviewers who are interested in honoring quality writing and communicating with one another about common concerns."

So if you're looking for a good (and fairly serious) book to read, you might want to check out one of these:

Fiction - 2666 by Roberto Bolaño.

General Nonfiction - The Forever War by Dexter Filkins.

Biography - The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul by Patrick French.

Autobiography - My Father’s Paradise: A Son’s Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq by Ariel Sabar.

Poetry (2 Awards) - Half the World in Light by Juan Felipe Herrera and Sleeping It Off in Rapid City by August Klienzahler.

Criticism - Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter by Seth Lerer.

NBCC Award Finalists

If you're looking for a few good books to read, on Saturday the National Book Critics Circle announced finalists for its 2008 awards.

Past winners have included such heavyweights as Toni Morrison, Wallace Stegner, Joyce Carol Oates, Cormac McCarthy, and Norman Maclean (you can see a complete list of past winners here).

This year's finallists include a novel about a junior-high school teacher and her son's wedding (Olive Kittredge by Elizabeth Strout), a memoir that examines the development of rural Montana (Why I Came West by Rick Bass), and a work of middle-eastern war correspondence (The Forever War by Dexter Filkins). Nominated authors include both a first-time novelist (M. Glenn Taylor) and a former pulitzer prize winner (Marilynne Robinson).

Check out a complete list of finalists here, and if you see a book you'd like an excuse to read, let us know, and we'll try to feature it at WWADY.

(NOTE: We begin reading So Brave, Young, and Handsome in 6 days. Get your copy soon.)