2015 Literary Book Award Winners

The book award winners for 2015 are in. This post covers the Nobel Prize in Literature, The Pulitzer Prize, The National Book Award, and the Man-Booker Prize for fiction.

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2015

The Nobel Prize honors an author “for outstanding contributions in the field of literature.” It is awarded annually. The past winners from the US include Sinclair Lewis, T. S. Elliot, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, and Toni Morrison to name a few; some heavy hitters in American Literature. The award is a big deal since only one author wins per year for a body of work.

This year the away went to Svetlana Alexievich a Belarus author and journalist. She was born in the Ukraine and writes about life during and after the Soviet Union. She was awarded “for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time.” What that means is that she writes many voices together at the same time in her novels and biographies. She mixes in reporting and interviews to create a collage of a wide range of voices. She is notable also for her criticism of political regimes in the former Soviet Union and in Belarus where she lives now. A very brave thing to do in a land torn by civil war and powerful regimes.

She has very good reviews on Amazon. Here are some of her works in English.




War’s Unwomanly Face
Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War
Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets

The Pulitzer Prize

The Pulitzer Prize for fiction is awarded yearly to an American author writing about American life. Some past winners are many of the same from the Nobel Prize; Willa Cather, John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, and Ernest Hemingway.

This year the award goes to Anthony Doerr for All the Light We Cannot See.

The National Book Award

The mission of the NBA is to celebrate the best American Literature, expand its audience, and enhance the cultural value of great writing in America. Some notable past winners include William Carlos Williams, Norman Mailer, John Updike, William Faulkner, and Thomas Pynchon to name a few. This award goes to a book and is presented to the author. Many authors have won for numerous books.

The 2015 winner for fiction is Adam Johnson for Fortune Smiles: Stories.

The Man-Booker Prize

The Man-Booker Prize while it remains relatively unknown in the US, is the major award an author can win next to the Nobel Prize. The award takes submissions from many countries and requires that the book me in English and published in the Commonwealth Nations, read former British colonies.

All the awards are a big deal to win, but this one is a step above because it includes many more authors and countries. Some notable winners include Julian Barnes and J. M. Coetzee, two great authors.

The 2015 Man-Booker Prize winner is Marlon James for A Brief History of Seven Killings.

This book also won many other awards and was included in numerous best of the year book lists. Marlon James is the first Jamaican to win the prestigious award and the first on this side of the pond, I believe. The book looks fantastic. It is a fictional account of an attempt to take Bob Marley’s life. It has been described as complicated and difficult, so bring your A reading game.



Those are the winners for the 2015 book season. Have you read any of these books yet? Let us know on our Kindle Literature Facebook page. Don’t forget to like the page for future posts.

2014 Literary Awards

The year’s book award winners are a great place to find books to read and discover new authors. Check out the links and try some samples on your Kindle.  

Nobel Prize in Literature

The highest recognition an author can receive is the Nobel Prize in Literature. The award is given to writers for their body of work. Some notable past winners are: Sinclair Lewis, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, and John Steinbeck.

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2014 was awarded to Patrick Modiano "for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation".

Suspended Sentences: Three Novellas (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

Dora Bruder

The award is open to writers from around the world. This year, Patrick Modiano, a French novelist was awarded the prize.

The Pulitzer Prize

The Pulitzer Prize for fiction  is “awarded for distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life.” There are also many other awards ranging from journalist to nonfiction. The Award was founded in 1918. Some previous winners are Willa Cather, John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, and Ernest Hemingway.

The 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction goes to Donna Tartt for The Goldfinch.

The National Book Award

The National Book Award’s mission is to “celebrate the best of American literature, to expand its audience, and to enhance the cultural value of good writing in America.” This book has a long and varied past and is one of the major awards given to American writers. This is another great place to find books to read and they do a lot of outreach to communities and in supporting public appearances by writers. Faulkner, Pynchon, Updike, McCarthy, and Franzen are some of the past nominees and winners.

The 2014 National Book Award for Fiction goes to Phil Klay for Redeployment.

The Man-Booker Prize

The Man Booker Prize for Fiction is a literary prize awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland, or Zimbabwe, according to Wikipedia. This is a very big deal. This is the biggest of the English Language awards given. They have a long list which they announce very early on and then a short list is selected out of that.

This is a major award to follow because it includes many countries that speak English and covers a diverse range of topics. I discovered a couple of my favorite writers while reading these novels, Julian Barnes and J.M. Coetzee.

The 2014 Man-Booker Prize winner is Richard Flanagan with The Narrow Road to the Deep North.

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Ebooks vs. Books and other Fallacies Part 1

The ebooks versus books “war” has been raging for sometime. This frivolous and baseless war has been conjured up by those that want to maintain their current control of the book market, mainly modern book publishers, and those that are resistant to change. Ebooks are not going to kill books, or libraries, or bookstores, the same way that television didn’t kill radio and the internet didn’t kill television.

Ebooks are the latest advancement in book technology. Publisher mass produced books were the last major technology that replaced the rotary press and the Gutenberg press before that, and hand written and bound books before that. What people really mean when they say that ebooks are killing books is that they prefer things not to change. They prefer “real” books, those that are mass-produced by publishers that have been around for only 100 years or so, to the newer style of books.  

If you don’t have a Kindle or ereader click to check them out.



The History

To address this debate lets look at the history of books and printing. In 1440 Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press. Before that books, were hand written and so very expensive to produce and to own. Only the very wealthy owned books and they were also the only ones that could read.

In 1455 Gutenberg printed his first book, a reproduction of the Latin Bible. In 1475 the first book written in English was printed.

In 1534 the first publishing house was established at Cambridge in England, Cambridge University Press. The Press’s mission was “To further further the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence.” Keep in mind this is still 200 years before the novel was invented in the early 17^th century. Being an Academic and educational publisher, they did not publish for general audiences.

It isn’t until 1639 that the first books were printed in the new American colonies. Followed by the first magazine being invented in 1663. In 1719 Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe was written, which was the first and beginning of the English novel. This and many others were being reproduced in the US without any form of payment to the authors. We have always been rascals when it comes to stealing from other countries.

Many advances in printing technology later produced the rotary press in 1846. This made it possible for newspapers to increase circulation and the New York Times debuted shortly after in 1851.

In 1845 paperbacks were introduced in the United States leading to the Copyright act of 1891, which banned the reprinting of English titles in paperback, due to all the pirating of books.

In 1917 the Pulitzer Prizes were first awarded, following in 1918 with awards for Fiction, drama, and poetry.

James Joyce’s Ulysses was published in 1922 leading to the first copies of a novel being destroyed because it was considered obscene. This is also the first book in the Modern Library’s 100 best novels list.

This brings us to modern day publishers that were developed as “a purely commercial affair” that established publishing as a business. In 1911 the formal business model of publishers and presses was developed leading to the domination of book publishing by presses with a profit bottom line. This was very different from the Cambridge University press that was disseminating knowledge and was not profit based.

For authors to get published they needed to go through literary agents and publishing houses to even be taken seriously (another fallacy). A book published by these publishers was considered good quality, but that alone does not guarantee a good book. A self-published book does not guarantee low quality writing either.

As technology has advanced in book printing from the Gutenberg press, to rotary press, and now modern day laser printers, so has the book. As different genres were developed so did the book business models. What I think this all points to is that book technology, mainly the book itself, has never been a constant. The ebooks versus books war is just the latest resistance to the evolution of books.

The current business model has been in place for about 100 years and it is finally beginning to change; giving more power to the authors who can choose to publish themselves and reach readers through the internet and online book sellers like Amazon. The business models have changed from mom and pop bookstores, to major chain retailers, to online wholesalers making more inexpensive books available to the reading public.

Books, bookstores, and libraries are not at war with ebooks; ebooks are the latest technological shift that has taken place. Like most change, it is being resisted by people who are accustomed to a certain way of reading, and the businesses who have perfected their marketing and sales models to produce their profits. The large global corporation book publishers are fighting against the acceptance of ebooks, specifically with Amazon.com who is taking their monopoly away from them by having the control of the market and demanding better pricing.

Authors have always been able to self publish but there is a great amount of stigma associated with it. Arguments have been around for some time now like, if you can’t get your book published by a major book publisher then you must not be worthy of publishing. Publishers have a stranglehold on the book markets and control what is published and what is advertised. Authors without a foothold have a very hard time breaking into the market.

The publishing houses are businesses that are concerned with the bottom line. Whether the book is good or not is only a small part of the equation in deciding whether to publish. Whether the book will produce a profit for the publisher is the main consideration. Publishing houses do not equal quality or variety in books.

Major publishing houses have published Britney Spears's and Sarah Palin'sautobiographies, likely through ghost writers, because they would sell big, not because they were well written. Deals are made in the millions for the latest celebrities to publish books. If the publishers are supposed to maintain the quality of books published, then someone forgot to let them know.  

In the next part we will talk about the arguments commonly made against ebooks and why they are baseless. For the final portion, we will cover the pros of ereaders and how you can have both books and ebooks live in harmony together.

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The Road

Cormac McCarthy
The Road - $11.99
2006

Isn’t it always the case that the book is better than the movie? Has it become a cliche that everyone says that now? One book that comes to mind is The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I loved the book when I read it and when I heard the movie was coming out I couldn't wait. I know that books are always better but some have turned into really good movies as well. When I finally saw the film version of The Road I wanted to love it. Yet, every scene would remind me of what they left out. The movie was good and if you didn't read the book you will really like it. What they always fail to include in the movies is the internal monologue of the characters. Even though there is almost none of that in The Road, you get a sense of what the characters are feeling by the lack of detail. The lack of details and communication gives you a sense of isolation and hopelessness, just like their surroundings.

The movie is dark and depressing. They did a great job staying true to the book. The main thing that is missing is the haunting feeling you get after reading the novel. For that you have to read the novel.

McCarthy is a master storyteller. He leaves the details for us to fill in. He shows us how the characters are feeling by what they do and how they interact with each other. He leaves so many things for us to fill in that the man and the boy are never named. It is up to us to fill in the faces and the names.

Cormac McCarthy has won numerous awards including the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for The Road. He is considered one of the best American writers and is being mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. McCarthy is a very private author but in the few interviews I found he is very opinionated. According to wikipedia:

In one of his few interviews (with The New York Times), McCarthy reveals that he is not a fan of authors who do not "deal with issues of life and death," citing Henry James and Marcel Proust as examples. "I don't understand them," he said. "To me, that's not literature. A lot of writers who are considered good I consider strange."

He sounds like a fascinating man. He is a great author and look for him to continue to write great books. If you haven’t read The Road yet, you definitely should. Download a sample and you will be hooked. This is one of the best books written in the last ten years, according to many sources. Check out the movie as well but make sure your read the book first!

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