I just checked out The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington from the library and am awaiting His Family by Ernest Poole. I want to read them all in chronological order to get the full effect.

Prize-winning list

From pulitzer.org. I have only read two of them:

2009 Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (Random House)

2008 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (Riverhead Books)

2007 The Road by Cormac McCarthy (Alfred A. Knopf)

2006 March by Geraldine Brooks (Viking)

2005 Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (Farrar)

2004 The Known World by Edward P. Jones (Amistad/ HarperCollins)

2003 Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (Farrar)

2002 Empire Falls by Richard Russo (Alfred A. Knopf)

2001 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon (Random House)

2000 Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri (Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin)

1999 The Hours by Michael Cunningham (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

1998 American Pastoral by Philip Roth (Houghton Mifflin)

1997 Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser (Crown)

1996 Independence Day by Richard Ford (Alfred A. Knopf)

1995 The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields (Viking)

1994 The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx (Charles Scribner's Sons)

1993 A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler (Henry Holt)

1992 A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley (Alfred A. Knopf)

1991 Rabbit At Rest by John Updike (Alfred A. Knopf)

1990 The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos (Farrar)

1989 Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler (Alfred A. Knopf)

1988 Beloved by Toni Morrison (Alfred A. Knopf)

1987 A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor (Alfred A. Knopf)

1986 Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (Simon & Schuster)

1985 Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie (Random House)

1984 Ironweed by William Kennedy (Viking)

1983 The Color Purple by Alice Walker (Harcourt Brace)

1982 Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike (Knopf)

1981 A Confederacy of Dunces by the late John Kennedy Toole (a posthumous publication)
(Louisiana State U. Press)

1980 The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer (Little)

1979 The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever (Knopf)

1978 Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson (Atlantic Monthly Press)

1977 (No Award)

1976 Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow (Viking)

1975 The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara (McKay)

1974 (No Award)

1973 The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty (Random)

1972 Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner (Doubleday)

1971 (No Award)

1970 Collected Stories by Jean Stafford (Farrar)

1969 House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday (Harper)

1968 The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron (Random)

1967 The Fixer by Bernard Malamud (Farrar)

1966 Collected Stories by Katherine Anne Porter (Harcourt)

1965 The Keepers Of The House by Shirley Ann Grau (Random)

1964 (No Award)

1963 The Reivers by William Faulkner (Random)

1962 The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O'Connor (Little)

1961 To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee (Lippincott)

1960 Advise and Consent by Allen Drury (Doubleday)

1959 The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor (Doubleday)

1958 A Death In The Family by the late James Agee (a posthumous publication) (McDowell, Obolensky)

1957 (No Award)

1956 Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor (World)

1955 A Fable by William Faulkner (Random)

1954 (No Award)

1953 The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (Scribner)

1952 The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk (Doubleday)

1951 The Town by Conrad Richter (Knopf)

1950 The Way West by A. B. Guthrie (Sloane)

1949 Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens (Harcourt)

1948 Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener (Macmillan)

1947 All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (Harcourt)

1946 (No Award)

1945 A Bell for Adano by John Hersey (Knopf)

1944 Journey in the Dark by Martin Flavin (Harper)

1943 Dragon's Teeth by Upton Sinclair (Viking)

1942 In This Our Life by Ellen Glasgow (Harcourt)

1941 (No Award)

1940 The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (Viking)

1939 The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (Scribner)

1938 The Late George Apley by John Phillips Marquand (Little)

1937 Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (Macmillan)

1936 Honey in the Horn by Harold L. Davis (Harper)

1935 Now in November by Josephine Winslow Johnson (Simon & Schuster)

1934 Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Miller (Harper)

1933 The Store by T. S. Stribling (Doubleday)

1932 The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck (John Day)

1931 Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes (Houghton)

1930 Laughing Boy by Oliver Lafarge (Houghton)

1929 Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin (Bobbs)

1928 The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder (Boni)

1927 Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield (Stokes)

1926 Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis (Harcourt)

1925 So Big by Edna Ferber (Doubleday)

1924 The Able McLaughlins by Margaret Wilson (Harper)

1923 One of Ours by Willa Cather (Knopf)

1922 Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington (Doubleday)

1921 The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (Appleton)

1920 (No Award)

1919 The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington (Doubleday)

1918 His Family by Ernest Poole (Macmillan)

1917 (No Award)

A history of the Pulitzer Prize

From pulitzer.org:

In writing his 1904 will, which made provision for the establishment of the Pulitzer Prizes as an incentive to excellence, [Joseph] Pulitzer specified solely four awards in journalism, four in letters and drama, one for education, and four traveling scholarships. In letters, prizes were to go to an American novel, an original American play performed in New York, a book on the history of the United States, an American biography, and a history of public service by the press.

But, sensitive to the dynamic progression of his society, Pulitzer made provision for broad changes in the system of awards. He established an overseer advisory board and willed it "power in its discretion to suspend or to change any subject or subjects, substituting, however, others in their places, if in the judgment of the board such suspension, changes, or substitutions shall be conducive to the public good or rendered advisable by public necessities, or by reason of change of time." He also empowered the board to withhold any award where entries fell below its standards of excellence. The assignment of power to the board was such that it could also overrule the recommendations for awards made by the juries subsequently set up in each of the categories.

Since the inception of the prizes in 1917, the board, later renamed the Pulitzer Prize Board, has increased the number of awards to 21 and introduced poetry, music, and photography as subjects, while adhering to the spirit of the founder's will and its intent.

Nervous beginnings

Hello, all.

You may be wondering why I decided to take on the daunting task of reading all of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novels.

It first started fall semester of '09. I took a feature writing class in which my teacher had us reading a lot of the prize-winning articles so I was spending a lot of time at pulitzer.org. While I love to read, it was kind of hard to find a lot of the articles past 2002 and I'm not incredibly interested in reading them anyways.

That's when I started getting curious about the prize-winning novels. I checked them out. They date back to 1917! I think I counted somewhere around 90 novels.

The thought to challenge myself and read them all didn't creep into my mind until later. Even then, I wasn't sure I wanted to do it. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I finally decided to do it!

I'm so nervous about this journey, and I think it might be a long one. But here goes! I think by the end of this, the winners for 2010 and 2011 might already be announced...