Prize Winning Books: A Challenge
I love books, and I love reading. Despite this, I still find it difficult to keep up to date with a lot of releases in the book world. I would like to change this.
Online book spaces make this both easier and harder. On one hand, book trends are quite apparent. With honed-in algorithms like that of TikTok, the books that become popular are almost impossible to escape. It becomes quite easy to make a list of what people are generally enjoying at any given time. On the other hand, I have found that what these books are can vary depending on the space you are in. For example, when I move over from TikTok to a specific space on Reddit, I end up with quite a different reading list.
And so I end up with the same problem: I have too many books to read and want to narrow them down.
Furthermore, my tastes don't necessarily even align with those of these online spaces... So what is the point in trying to take these recommendations?
This month, the Booker prize winner was announced. I realised that I had never given much thought to the books that are shortlisted for book awards since I'm usually wrapped up in my already existing TBR. Surely these shortlists are the perfect way to get involved in new releases! But even here, it dawned upon me that there are quite a lot of prizes that exist, and I would have no idea what shortlists I would like to follow.
The only way I will ever figure out which awards I will benefit most out of following is to actually read some of the previous winners. So, I narrowed down six prizes - Booker, Pulitzer, Hugo, Women's Fiction, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke. I would like to read the previous 5 winners (as of writing this) of these awards and see which rates highest for me on average. Hopefully I will have a couple of clear winners by the end.
I have made a couple of exceptions however. Firstly, I have substituted one Booker prize winner for the 2020 winner - Shuggie Bain. This is purely because I already own this book and have been excited to read it for a while. I have also omitted the fifth Murderbot book, Network Effect, from my list. This one is on my laziness, as I haven't read the rest of the series yet and I don't feel like doing that just for this.
Oh, and I have also added a section for Nobel Prize in Literature winners. Slightly less important for me, but I'd still like to try.
I've already managed to get through a couple of these by chance in the past, but I'm really excited to get through more. Here's the full list - excuse any mistakes - if anyone else is interested in doing something similar.
