Around the Year in 52 Books discussion

The longlist for the Booker Prize was just announced. Do you regularly read (or avoid) books that are winners or nominees for prizes - Pulitzer, Nobel, Booker, or genre books like Hugo for science fiction?

I have a personal challenge every year to read 5 Nobel laureates. There are some gems in there. Some of them are just boring. And some are disappointing, where there's been too much hype.

Dubhease, I love that idea. I seek out books from many of the award lists each year, but never thought to track them. What's one more personal challenge on my ever-growing list? I have found many a new-to-me author from these lists and can only think of one that was a major disappointment.

If a book is an award winner, it will make me take a second look. I will read the advertising blurb and read the reviews. If after doing this, I'm interested, I will read it. However, I will not read a book simply because it is an award winner. I have read too many awards winners and thought they were terrible wondering what someone was smoking when they awarded the prize.

A few years ago I was in a Pulitzer book club and really enjoyed it. The prize winners are really diverse - fiction and nonfiction, poetry and plays. Even though I've moved away I still seek out Pulitzers winners.

I really like following awards lists. I don’t differentiate much between nominees and winners. They expose me to more challenging authors and topics. I love to be surprised. Sometimes one book can shake up my viewpoint, or spark an interest in a new topic.

Robin I think you already saw this. The blog highlights the last 8 winners of 12 or so popular fiction awards. I counted the number I read for each award. Based on this, I realized I liked the Pulitzer winners more than the National Book Award Winners. Now I know I should follow the Kirkus Prize and Andrew Carnegie medal lists as well. I think I read more Booker nominees than winners. I’m going to keep reading TOB books, which tend to have winners from other awards too. I like sci-awards too.

https://www.goodreads.com/blog/show/2...

For several years I set up my own awards challenge, with 10+ different awards. I really enjoyed it and I plan to do that again next year. I really like the Dayton Peace Prize which Gail suggested last year, and now the Orwell Prize too. See the awards suggestion #5 on poll 6! Gail set up listopias for both. (Thank you Gail!)

I want to pack my rejects list with different awards suggestions this summer. If none of them get in I plan to suggest a general awards prompt. Maybe the voters will take pity and finally vote for one.

Laura Z wrote: "A few years ago I was in a Pulitzer book club and really enjoyed it. The prize winners are really diverse - fiction and nonfiction, poetry and plays. Even though I've moved away I still seek out Pu..."

Yes the variety is great. I want to read more Pulitzer nonfiction books and plays this next year. My husband is involved in our community theatre group, and one of our 2026 plays was nominated for Pulitzer. So I will start with The Minutes by Tracy Letts.

The descriptions of some of the journalism award winners sound really interesting too.

I neither seek out nor avoid books that win prizes. If a book appeals to me, I read it. That said, I have noticed that I have enjoyed many of the Booker Prize winners or nominees so I may start paying more attention to the list

It depends. Sometimes prizewinning books live up to the hype ( James, Demon Copperhead). But sometimes they are too abstract for me (Orbital, Tinkers.) . Often they are depressing.

I have recently started reading some books from the Booker Prize. Not neccesarily the winners, but going through some of the past longlists and shortlists and I have found that I click with a lot of the books on it. That's my current project for now. I like the lists at the very elast because they put other books on my radar. I'm so tired of goodreads marketing the same 20 books over and over again

I have read the entire Booker Prize longlist for the past four years and have a goal to read many of the previous nominees. I find I am a good audience for that particular prize. I do occasionally read for the Pulitzer or Nobel but not in any organized manner. I tend to read several of the books listed for the Orwell Prize and the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction each year, since these align well with my interests.

There are a few awards that I keep my eye on (like NancyJ, I don't pay much attention to winners vs nominees). I would say I annually check on the Audie Awards (for audiobooks) and the Anisfield-Wolf Awards (focusing on diversity and racism). When I think of it, I'll check out the Printz Award (for YA books) or the Newbery Award (for children's books).

When I do happen to read one of the "bigger" awards, it's more by accident and usually many years after it won.

I like to see which books have been nominated for awards. If they sound good, I will add them to my TBR but I don't wind up reading too many of them. Or, if I do, it's years later. Like Dubhease, I have a personal Nobel Laureate challenge this year. It was originally 5 per year but I lowered it to a more realistic number of 3 and have read 1 so far.

I don't tend to jive with award lists. Generally not my thing. Partly this is because I don't usually like literary fiction, but even within genre awards I just don't seem to have the same taste as the judging committee.

I do regularly read award nominees and winners, especially since literary fiction is one of my main genres. Often, I’m already familiar with some of the titles, but longlists and shortlists also serve as great tools for discovery. If a synopsis intrigues me, I’ll check the book out.

Ideally, I like reading all the shortlisted titles, so I can make my own predictions and see how they compare to the final results. I follow several prizes, including the Booker, Pulitzer, National Book Award, Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence, National Book Critics Circle, Kirkus, Nobel, and the Women’s Prize.

As a bit of a completionist, I’ve also set myself a personal challenge to read as many past and present winners as I can. I enjoy seeing what made these books prizeworthy, what they say about the time in which they were published, and whether they’ve stood the test of time.

My local library book group often reads prize winners a year or two later, when they are more available.

About the only ones I read by default are the Hugo nominees, as I get to vote on them, as I've been a World Science Fiction Society member since 2014.

I have to say, I've not been a fan of most of the Booker nominees I've read, although I did enjoy Orbital.

Robin P wrote: "It depends. Sometimes prizewinning books live up to the hype ( James, Demon Copperhead). But sometimes they are too abstract for me (Orbital, [book..."

"Often, they are depressing." That is my experience with the Booker Prize winners (and nominees) that I have read, to the point where I tend to avoid them now. Depressing, or at the least, solemn. The state of the world is such that I feel the need up be uplifted, even amused, not depressed by what I read.

I neither seek out nor avoid prize winners. Honestly, I just don't care enough. Those are the prompts that regularly annoy me, but I know others care about it. Basically, the only time I look at the lists is for a prompt here.

I look and might add them to my TBR list. Every once in awhile I'll pull some book off my TBR I have no clue what it is to answer a prompt and while reading be like "how did this get on my list?" and realize it was a shortlist book.

Dixie wrote: ""Often, they are depressing." That is my experience with the Booker Prize winners (and nominees) that I have read, to the point where I tend to avoid them now. Depressing, or at the least, solemn. The state of the world is such that I feel the need up be uplifted, even amused, not depressed by what I read"

Please don't ask how many romance books I've read this year...

I don't view them as depressing. I view them as thought provoking.