Close but no cigar
Did you hear that the Pulitzer Prizes were announced yesterday and, for the first time since 1977, no prize was awarded for fiction ? That seems pretty curious in view of the fact that there was some pretty darned good fiction released within the past year. The only three books in the fiction category that were finalists in the nominating process for the prize were Swamplandia! by Karen Russell, Train Demons by Denis Johnson, and The Pale King by David Foster Wallace. I have not read any of the three - yet. (To be perfectly honest, I'd never even heard of Johnson's book, but now that I have, I'll look it up and see if its something I might have an interest in reading.) But I did read several books published in 2011 that I certainly think were worthy of Pulitzer consideration and I blogged about all of them here: The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach; The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht; State of Wonder by Ann Patchett; and The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides, to name...