My Personal National Book Award Challenge

After investigating The National Book Award webpage and I realized how many of these award books I've read and how many I want to read. This caused me to decide to attempt to read at least two of the winning books per year.

Up until last year four awards were given: Fiction; Nonfiction; Poetry; Young People's Literature. In 2018 one more award was started: Translated Literature.

To not completely overwhelm myself I decided to attempt this project for the past ten years only and today I have finished my last book to complete the project. 

 

I better get going if I am to finish the 2020 winners before they announce the 2021 winners!

Now the challenge is on-going. I am hoping to finish two books from the list each year, which I completed in 2019.

Today I finished The Friend by Nunez. I also read one of the fiction finalists, The Great Believers, which I actually liked better. I read Poet X last year. It also won the Printz Award for YA books. 

I read both Sing, Unburied, Sing (fiction) and Far From the Tree (Young People's Literature) last year in 2018.

I read The Underground Railroad (fiction) in 2017 and March, book 3 (Young People's Literature) in 2016.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I finished Between the World and Me in April 2019. It was the nonfiction winner. Challenger Deep was one of my favorite YA reads of 2015.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I did a read-along of Redeployment with another Army wife friend. It is a collection of short stories about the perils of dealing with military service. I finished it in April 2019. I read Brown Girl Dreaming in 2014. It is a memoir written in verse.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I read the poetry collection, Incarnadine in March 2019 and the Young People's Literature winner, The Thing Called Luck in April 2019.    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I read both the fiction winner, The Round House and the nonfiction winner, Behind the Beautiful Forevers for books club in 2016.
Since it is my own personal challenge I decided to read a finalist for the fiction award for this year. I completed The Buddha in the Attic in April 2019. Inside Out and Back Again was the Young People's Literature winner and I read it in 2011.

Again I decided to read a finalist for this year and finished Great House in February. I also finished Lighthead, the Poetry winner a few days later in February.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I read Let the Great World Spin in 2010, and was one of my favorite books that year. Claudette Colvin, the Young People's Literature is a nonfiction selection and I completed it in March 2019.


It feels good to have completed this project. For the most part I understand why the books were selected as winners. They may not all be personal favorites but I appreciate the excellence in writing and the compelling themes. I began this project in February 2019 and I hope on a personal level to read at least two winners each year going forward.