The Reading Lounge: A Pulitzer Project

Three winners I've loved and the eleven I've picked to read this year

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I decided in early January that I wanted a reading project this year. Something not too ambitious for this mood reader because I need to allow maximum flexibility in my reading. But I also knew that I wanted (and needed) a tiny bit of structure and something to plan for and anticipate in my reading life. When I co-hosted the Book Talk Etc podcast, I loved reading for themes and doing so increased the quality of my reading over the three years I read that way. This reading project feels like a similar way of reading, yet is also extremely flexible since I’m giving myself the remainder of this year to complete it.

When I started thinking about what type of reading project I wanted to do for myself over an (almost) entire year, I landed on literary awards. Why? It’s fun and challenging for me to discover what I think about books that might have been “popular” or won a literary award at some point in time. So, I started researching the winners of various literary prizes, thinking at first that I would end up choosing The Booker Prize because I’ve read many of their long and short listed nominees over the years. In fact, I read and mostly enjoyed this winner, and this book¹ is my top book of the past decade (maybe ever?). There are many other Booker longlisted nominees that I’ve read and loved, but as far as the winners, I haven’t read any other than Orbital.

Why The Pulitzer?

The Pulitzer Prize is a literary prize most readers have heard about and perhaps even follow closely. I’ll include some links below if you’d like to read more about The Pulitzer Prize, including a link for the entire list of winners. There’s also a link of 2025 literary awards coming our way so don’t miss that…

The Pulitzer Prize is an annual award given for outstanding achievements in journalism, literature, and music. The prizes are chosen by a board of judges appointed by Columbia University and the winners are announced every spring. This year’s winners will be announced Monday, May 5 at 3:00pm EST.

When I began perusing the list of past Pulitzer winners for fiction a few things became crystal clear— of the four winners I’ve read, three of them are all time favorites², the other one I read in high school but still remember, and many of the other winners are on my tbr and/or sitting on my print bookshelf at home! The timing feels right to make this particular prize list my focus of this year’s reading project. While there are various prize winning categories of Pulitzer winners, my focus will be on the fiction winners. I’ll share the four I’ve read below and then the eleven I’ve chosen to read this year. I think this will be fun and if you’d like to join in, please feel free and let us know in the comments what books you’d like to read.

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The Four Pulitzer Winners I’ve Read

1. The 1961 winner To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee - I read in my English class in the late 1980s when I was in high school. I liked it then, still remember it, but it’s not a lifetime favorite

2. The 2014 winner The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt - I just read this in September of 2024 and it blew me away. It vaulted to an all time favorite and was my top book of 2024.

   From The Pulitzers….A beautifully written coming-of-age novel with exquisitely drawn characters that follows a grieving boy's entanglement with a small famous painting that has eluded destruction, a book that stimulates the mind and touches the heart

3. The 2015 winner All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr - I read this right when it came out and remember loving the scope and the characters so much. It has a place on my 5 star bookshelf at home³ and it on my short list of books to reread because I want to experience the story again

   From the Pulitzers….An imaginative and intricate novel inspired by the horrors of World War II and written in short, elegant chapters that explore human nature and the contradictory power of technology.

4. The 2023 winner Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver - I read this as an advanced copy in the fall of 2022 and it ended up being my top book of the year. The audio narration brought Demon to life and it’s one of my all time favorite coming of age stories. I will not forget Demon!

   From the Pulitzers….A masterful recasting of “David Copperfield,” narrated by an Appalachian boy whose wise, unwavering voice relates his encounters with poverty, addiction, institutional failures and moral collapse–and his efforts to conquer them.

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The Eleven I’ve Chosen To Read This Year

1. The 1958 winner A Death In the Family by James Agee - This is on my print tbr shelf at home. I bought this last summer at Barnes and Noble, so when I saw it on the list it feels like my past self of last summer knew this might be for me

2. The 1962 Winner The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O’Connor

3. The 1985 winner Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie - Amazon tells me I purchased this for my Kindle back in 2018— I have no memory of buying this but yet again my past self knew it would call to me someday:)

4. The 1986 winner Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry - so many of you have loved this book, I just have to find out what I think of it

5. The 1999 winner The Hours by Michael Cunningham - this has been called a modern classic and as I found out in 2024 when I loved this book, modern classics can be huge winners for me

6. The 2000 winner Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri - I enjoyed her writing style so much when I read this book last year that I knew I had to read her Pulitzer winner

7. The 2002 winner Empire Falls by Richard Russo - I’ve always wanted to read Richard Russo and I tend to have good luck with lifelong friends and small town stories

8. The 2005 winner Gilead by Marilynne Robinson - This seems right up my alley and has been one I’ve picked up many times over the years at the bookstore so it feels like this is the year to finally read it

9. The 2017 winner The Underground Railroad and

10. The 2020 winner The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead - both of these have been on my tbr and I can’t decide so adding each

11. The 2019 winner The Overstory by Richard Powers - I loved Bewilderment and quite simply I love trees⁴ so this feels like someone

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There were several other books I was interested in, but I wanted to be very selective in my choices. If I can read more I will and I’d love to hear if you have enjoyed any Pulitzer winners or nominees in the comments

Links

The Pulitzer Prize fiction winners

The Pulitzer Prizes - history, FAQ’s, lists and more

How to Read the 2024 Pulitzer Prize winning books (Town and Country)

Twenty three best book awards of 2025 (Rocket Expansion)

1. Shortlisted in 2015 but didn’t win

2. Two were my top books of the year the year that I read them

3. a special shelf collection of many of my all time favorite books ever- this shelf is in our main family room so I can see these books every day

4. I walk in the woods daily and have since 2009 so the trees there feel like friends:) 🌳