PEN/Faulkner Foundation Reading List

2008

2008 AWARD WINNER

Kate Christensen, The Great Man

2008 FINALISTS

Annie Dillard, The Maytrees

David Leavitt, The Indian Clerk

T.M. McNally, The Gateway: Stories

Ron Rash, Chemistry and Other Stories

2007
Philip Roth, Everyman
Charles D’Ambrosio, The Dead Fish Museum
Deborah Eisenberg, Twilight of the Superheroes
Amy Hempel, The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel
Edward P. Jones, All Aunt Hagar’s Children

2006 E.L. Doctorow, The March Karen Fisher, A Sudden Country William Henry Lewis, I Got Somebody in Staunton James Salter, Last Night Bruce Wagner, The Chrysanthemum Place 2005 Ha Jin, War Trash Jerome Charyn, The Green Lantern Edwidge Danticat, The Dew Breaker Marilynne Robinson, Gilead Steve Yarbrough, Prisoners of War

2004 John Updike, The Early Stories 1953–1975 Frederick Barthemle, Elroy Nights ZZ Packer, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere Caryl Phillips, A Distant Shore Tobias Wolff, Old School

2003 Sabina Murray, The Caprices Peter Cameron, The City of Your Final Destination William Kennedy, Roscoe Victor LaValle, The Ecstatic Gilbert Sorrentino, Little Casino

2002 Ann Patchett, Bel Canto Karen Joy Fowler, Sister Noon Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections Claire Messud, The Hunters Manil Suri, The Death of Vishnu

2001 Philip Roth, The Human Stain Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay Millicent Dillon, Harry Gold Denis Johnson, The Name of the World Mona Simpson, Off Keck Road

2000
Ha Jin, Waiting
Frederick Busch, The Night Inspector
Ken Kalfus, PU-239
Elizabeth Strout, Amy and Isabelle
Lily Tuck, Siam

1999 Michael Cunningham, The Hours Russell Banks, Cloudsplitter Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible Brian Morton, Starting Out in the Evening Richard Selzer, The Doctor Stories

1998
Rafi Zabor, The Bear Comes Home
Donald Antrim, The Hundred Brothers
Rilla Askew, The Mercy Seat
Mary Gaitskill, Because They Wanted To
Francisco Goldman, The Ordinary Seaman

1997
Gina Berriault, Women in their Beds
Daniel Akst, St. Burl’s Obituary
Kathleen Cambor, The Book of Mercy
Ron Hansen, Atticus
Jamaica Kincaid, The Autobiography of My Mother

1996 Richard Ford, Independence Day Madison Smart Bell, All Souls’ Rising William Gass, The Tunnel Claire Messud, When the World Was Steady J. Verdelle, The Good Negress

1995
David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars
Frederich Busch, The Children in the Woods
Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River
Joyce Carol Oates, What I Lived For
Joanna Scott, Various Antidotes

1994 Philip Roth, Operation Shylock Stanley Elkin, Van Gogh’s Room at Arles Dagoberto Gilb, The Magic of Blood Fae Myenne Ng, Bone Kate Wheeler, Not Where I Started From

1993
E. Annie Proulx, Postcards
Robert Olen Butler, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
Francisco Goldman, The Long Night of White Chickens
Maureen Howard, Natural History
Sylvia Watanabe, Talking to the Dead

1992
Don DeLillo, Mao II
Stephen Dixon, Frog
Paul Gervais, Extraordinary People
Allan Gurganus, White People
Bradford Morrow, The Almanac Branch

1991 John Edgar Wideman, Philadelphia Fire Paul Auster, The Music of Chance Joanne Meschery, A Gentleman”s Guide to the Frontier Steven Millhauser, The Barnum Museum Joanna Scott, Arrogance

1990
E. L. Doctorow, Billy Bathgate
Russell Banks, Affliction
Molly Gloss, The Jump-Off Creek
Josephine Jacobsen, On the Island
Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Leaving Brooklyn

1989
James Salter, Dusk
Mary McGarry Morris, Vanished
Thomas Savage, The Corner of Rife and Pacific
Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Death of Methuselah

1988 T. Coraghessan Boyle, World’s End Richard Bausch, Spirits Alice McDermott, That Night Cynthia Ozick, The Messiah of Stockholm Lawrence Thornton, Imagining Argentina

1987
Richard Wiley, Soldiers in Hiding
Richard Ford, The Sportswriter
Charles Johnson, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Janet Kauffman, Collaborators
Maureen Howard, Expensive Habits

1986
Peter Taylor, The Old Forest
William Gaddis, Carpenter’s Gothic
Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove
Hugh Nissenson, The Tree of Life
Helen Norris, The Christmas Wife


1985
Tobias Wolff, The Barracks Thief
Harriet Doerr, Stones for Ibarra
Donald Hays, The Dixie Association
David Leavitt, Family Dancing
James Purdy, On Glory’s Courses

1984 John Edgar Wideman, Sent for You Yesterday Ron Hansen, The Assasination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford William Kennedy, Ironweed Jamaica Kincaid, At the Bottom of the River Bernard Malamud, The Stories Cynthia Ozick, The Cannibal Galaxy

1983
Toby Olson, Seaview
Maureen Howard, Grace Abounding
Bobbie Ann Mason, Shiloh and Other Stories
George Steiner, The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H.
Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
William S. Wilson, Birthplace

1982 David Bradley, The Chaneysville Incident Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories Richard Bausch, Take Me Back Mark Helprin, Ellis Island and Other Stories Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping Robert Stone, A Flag for Sunrise

1981 Walter Abish, How German Is It? Shirley Hazzard, The Transit of Venus Walker Percy, The Second Coming Gilbert Sorrentino, Aberration of Starlight John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: http://www.penfaulkner.org

Oprah's Book List

Books that I have read will be changed to red font.

Complete List of Oprah's Book Club Books

2008
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle

2007
The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
*Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
*The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The Measure of a Man by Sidney Poitier

2006
Night by Elie Wiesel

2005
A Million Little Pieces by James Frey
Light in August by William Faulkner
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
*As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

2004
The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
*Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
*One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

2003
Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton
East of Eden by John Steinbeck

2002
Sula by Toni Morrison
Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald

2001
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
Cane River by Lalita Tademy
Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail by Malika Oufkir
Icy Sparks by Gwyn Hyman Rubio
*We Were The Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates

2000
*House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III
*Drowning Ruth by Christina Schwarz
Open House by Elizabeth Berg
*The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
*While I Was Gone by Sue Miller
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Back Roads by Tawni O'Dell
*Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
*Gap Creek by Robert Morgan

1999
*A Map of the World by Jane Hamilton
*Vinegar Hill by A. Manette Ansay
*River, Cross My Heart by Breena Clarke
*Tara Road by Maeve Binchy
Mother of Pearl by Melinda Haynes
*White Oleander by Janet Fitch
*The Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve
The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
*Jewel by Bret Lott

1998
*Where the Heart Is by Billie Letts
Midwives by Chris Bohjalian
What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day by Pearl Cleage
*I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb
Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat
*Black and Blue by Anna Quindlen
*Here on Earth by Alice Hoffman
Paradiseby Toni Morrison

1997
The Best Way To Play by Bill Cosby
The Treasure Hunt by Bill Cosby
The Meanest Thing To Say by Bill Cosby
A Virtuous Woman by Kaye Gibbons
*Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons
*A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines
*Songs In Ordinary Time by Mary McGarry Morris
The Heart of a Woman by Maya Angelou
*The Rapture of Canaan by Sheri Reynolds
*Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi
*She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb

1996
*The Book of Ruth by Jane Hamilton
*Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
*The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard

Pulitzer Prize Winner List

Here is my list of Pulitzer prize winners that I have read. Once I have read it, I will highlight it in red. My goal is to read all of these books eventually.

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

2007 The Road by Cormac McCarthy (Alfred A. Knopf)
Read October 2007 Highly Recommend

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)
Read 2001 and several times since then. This is one of my absolute favorite books. It is the story of Shakespeare's King Lear set on a farm in Iowa.

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 Optimists 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)

Finalists

2008 Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

2008 Shakespeare’s Kitchen by Lore Segal (The New Press)

2007 After This by Alice McDermott (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

2007 The Echo Maker by Richard Powers (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

2006 The March by E.L. Doctorow (Random House)

2006 The Bright Forever by Lee Martin (Shaye Areheart Books/Crown Publishing)

2005 War Trash by Ha Jin (Pantheon Books)

2005 An Unfinished Season by Ward Just (Houghton Mifflin)

2004 American Woman by Susan Choi (HarperCollins) June 2009

2004 Evidence of Things Unseen by Marianne Wiggins (Simon & Schuster)

2003 Servants of the Map: Stories by Andrea Barrett (W.W. Norton)

2003 You Are Not a Stranger Here by Adam Haslett (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday)

2002 The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (Farrar)

2002 John Henry Days by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday)

2001 Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates (The Ecco Press/HarperCollins)

2001 The Quick and the Dead by Joy Williams (Alfred A. Knopf)

2000 Close Range: Wyoming Stories by Annie Proulx (Scribner) pre-2009

2000 Waiting by Ha Jin (Pantheon Books)

1999 Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks (HarperFlamingo)

1999 The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (HarperFlamingo) pre-2009

1998 Underworld by Don DeLillo (Scribner)

1998 Bear and His Daughter: Stories by Robert Stone (Houghton Mifflin)

1997 Unlocking the Air and Other Stories by Ursula K. LeGuin (HarperCollins)

1997 The Manikin by Joanna Scott (Henry Holt)

1996 Mr. Ives' Christmas by Oscar Hijuelos (HarperCollins)

1996 Sabbath's Theater by Philip Roth (Houghton Mifflin)

1995 What I Lived For by Joyce Carol Oates (Dutton)

1995 The Collected Stories by Grace Paley (Farrar)

1994 The Collected Stories by Reynolds Price (Atheneum)

1994 Operation Shylock: A Confession by Philip Roth (Simon & Schuster)

1993 At Weddings and Wakes by Alice McDermott (Farrar Straus Giroux)

1993 Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates (Dutton)

1992 Mao II by Don DeLillo (Viking)

1992 Jernigan by David Gates (Alfred A. Knopf)

1992 Lila: An Inquiry into Morals by Robert M. Pirsig (Bantam Books)

1991 Mean Spirit by Linda Hogan (Atheneum)

1991 The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien (Houghton Mifflin)

1990 Billy Bathgate by E.L. Doctorow (Random House)

1989 Where I'm Calling From by the late Raymond Carver (Atlantic Monthly)

1988 Persian Nights by Diane Johnson (Alfred A. Knopf)

1988 That Night by Alice McDermott (Farrar) pre-2009

1987 Paradise by Donald Barthelme (G.P. Putnam's Sons)

1987 Whites by Norman Rush (Alfred A. Knopf)

1986 Continental Drift by Russell Banks (Harper & Row)

1986 The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler (Alfred A. Knopf) pre-2009

1985 I Wish This War Were Over by Diana O'Hehir (Atheneum)

1985 Leaving the Land by Douglas Unger (Harper & Row)

1984 The Feud by Thomas Berger (Delacorte)

1984 Cathedral by Raymond Carver (Knopf)

1983 Rabbis and Wives by the late Chaim Grade (Knopf)

1983 Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler (Knopf)

1982 Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson (Farrar)

1982 A Flag for Sunrise by Robert Stone (Knopf)

1981 Godric by Frederick Buechner (Atheneum)

1981 So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell (Knopf)

1980 The Ghost Writer by Philip Roth (Farrar)

1980 Birdy by William Wharton (Knopf)