Friday, March 11, 2022

National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award Winners -- BOOK LIST



The National Book Critics Circle presents annual awards for books published in English in six categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Biography, Autobiography, Poetry, and Criticism. The NBCC Awards started in 1975.

I confess I bear a grudge against the NBCC fiction Award for inflicting some of my least favorite novels on me, including Being Dead, All the Pretty Horses, and Song of Solomon. On the other hand, I only read Americanah and Motherless Brooklyn because they are on list and I love both of them.

I decided to not keep updating the winners after 2021. My enthusiasm for prize-winners is waning with the 2020s. I may focus my efforts on reading the winners up to 2020 then declare victory and move on to other bookish projects.

This is the list of the NBCC fiction Award winners through 2021, with notes about whether I've finished the book or not. So far, I've read 33 of the winners. I've also noted it a book is on my TBR shelf or available as an audiobook from my library. Those notes help me keep track. 

2021 The Love Songs of W.E.B DuBois by HonorĂ©e Fanonne Jeffers ON OVERDRIVE

2020 Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell FINISHED

2019 Everything Inside by Edwidge Danticat ON OVERDRIVE

2018 Milkman by Anna Burns FINISHED

2017 Improvement by Joan Silber ON OVERDRIVE

2016 LaRose by Louise Erdrich FINISHED

2015 The Sellout by Paul Beatty FINISHED

2014 Lila by Marilynne Robinson FINISHED

2013 Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie FINISHED

2012 Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain FINISHED

2011 Binocular Vision: New & Selected Stories by Edith Pearlman

2010 A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan FINISHED

2009 Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (reviewed hereFINISHED

2008 2666 by Robert Bolano TBR SHELF

2007 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz FINISHED

2006 The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai FINISHED

2005 The March by E.L. Doctorow ON OVERDRIVE

2004 Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (reviewed hereFINISHED

2003 The Known World by Edward P. Jones FINISHED

2002 Atonement by Ian McEwan FINISHED

2001 Austerlitz by Winfried Georg Sebald FINISHED

2000 Being Dead by Jim Crace FINISHED

1999 Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem FINISHED

1998 The Love of a Good Woman by Alice Munro TBR SHELF

1997 The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald FINISHED

1996 Women in Their Beds by Gina Berriault TBR SHELF

1995 Mrs. Ted Bliss by Stanley Elkin FINISHED

1994 The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields FINISHED

1993 A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines TBR SHELF

1992 All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy (reviewed hereFINISHED

1991 A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley FINISHED

1990 Rabbit at Rest by John Updike FINISHED

1989 Billy Bathgate by E. L. Doctorow FINISHED

1988 The Middleman and Other Stories by Bharati Mukherjee TBR SHELF

1987 The Counterlife by Philip Roth FINISHED

1986 Kate Vaiden by Reynolds Price FINISHED

1985 The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler FINISHED

1984 Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich TBR SHELF

1983 Ironweed by William Kennedy FINISHED

1982 George Mills by Stanley Elkin TBR SHELF

1981 Rabbit is Rich by John Updike FINISHED

1980 The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard TBR SHELF

1979 The Year of the French by Thomas Flanagan FINISHED

1978 The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever (reviewed hereFINISHED

1977 Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison FINISHED

1976 October Light by John C Gardner TBR SHELF

1975 Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow FINISHED

NOTES

Updated March 20, 2024. This is a refresh of the list I first posted in 2012. 






2 comments:

  1. When did you start this project. Impressive amount of dedication. I loved HAMNET and MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN. I started a similar project to read the Pulitzer Prize winners for literature and then amended my effort to recent winners and some past winners. I hope to finish up my challenge this year because I am feeling less than inspired by many of the selections. So many books are NOW books and reading them decades later they just don't speak to the modern audience the way they must have when published.

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    1. I think I started on this one around 2008 or so, when I started this blog. I became obsessed with book lists after I finished all the books on the Modern Library's Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century. I finished those books in 2008, which is when I started this blog to keep track of the other lists I started working on then. I'm working my way through the Pulitzer winners too (fiction, not the others), Booker, Costa, and others. I like the older books because they teach me about how people thought back when those books were popular.

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