Women Authors -- BOOK THOUGHTS

BOOK THOUGHTS

Women Authors

March is Women's History Month, so I thought I'd highlight some of the women authors sitting on my TBR shelves. My reading is split pretty evenly between male and female authors and this is reflected in the books on my TBR shelves. 

Who are some of your favorite women writers? Or those you want to try?

Here’s are two stacks of books by women. In the stack on the left are ten books by women writers whose books I’ve already tried. Some of these, like Iris Murdoch and Muriel Spark, are favorites and I've read most of their books. Others, like Margaret Atwood and Elizabeth Strout, are those I've only dipped into but want to read more of their work. In the right stack are ten book by women writers whose work is new to me. There are many other women authors I love, but I limited myself to ten of each. 

FAVORITE AUTHORS

Kate Atkinson, Transcription. I love everything by Atkinson. I really like her Jackson Brodie mystery series, but I also like her historical fiction. 

Margaret Atwood, Hag-Seed. This is Atwood's retelling of William Shakespeare's last play, The Tempest. I've read and enjoyed a few other books from the Hogarth Shakespeare series so am really looking forward to this one. 

Joanne Harris, Five Quarters of the Orange. I've only read one Joanne Harris book and can't remember which one, other than it wasn't Chocolat. I need to remedy this situation. 

Patricia Highsmith, Ripley Under Ground and Ripley’s Game. My book club read her first Ripley book a few years ago and I intended to read the others straight through, but I got off track.

Iris Murdoch, Nuns and Soldiers. I love Murdoch's books but she was so prolific! I feel like I must have read them all but I'm only halfway through. 

Ann Patchett, State of Wonder. I read Bel Canto right when it came out and didn't like it so never read any more books by Anne Patchett. Then my book club read The Dutch House and I loved it, so I read Tom Lake when it came out. Now I want to go back and read her earlier books. 

Annie Proulx, Bad Dirt. The Shipping News is one of my very favorite books. I think I've read almost everything Proulx has written. I don't gravitate to short stories, so what is left on my TBR shelf are a coup of sort story collections, like this one.

Barbara Pym, An Academic Question. Pym is another author I love but have not read as many of her books as I think I have. Time to catch up!

Muriel Spark, The Comforters. I love Spark's snarky, dark humor but have never read this, her first novel. 

Elizabeth Strout, Oh William! I'm not wild about the two other Strout books I've read, but I found this one in a little free library so want to give her another chance. 

NEW-TO-ME 

Ann Beattie, Chilly Scenes of Winter. This one is on Erica Jong's list of Top 20th Century Novels by Women, one of my favorite sources of women authors. 

Suzanne Berne, A Crime in the Neighborhood. This one won the 1999 Women's Prize for Fiction (then the Orange Prize), my other favorite source for finding women writers.

Gina Berriault, Women in Their Beds. Again, I am not drawn to short stories. But this one won both the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and I am working my way through both those lists. 

Harriet Doerr, Stones for Ibarra. Another Erica Jong listed book.

Shirley Hazzard, The Transit of Venus. This has been on my TBR shelf for years, even though it sounds like a wonderful ovel about two sisters. 

Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of Pointed Firs. It isn't easy to find classic books by women so I don't know why I haven't read this before now. 

Hiromi Kawakami, The Nakano Thrift Shop. I don't know anything about this, but bought it on a whim because I liked the cover and title. 

Molly Keane, Good Behaviour. This one gets a lot of love on Instagram so I am excited to read it. 

Olivia Manning, The Balkan Trilogy. Anthony Burgess included this trilogy on his list of the Best 99 Novels in English Since 1939 (to 1984), another list I'm working on.

Jody Picoult, Keeping Faith. Despite Picoult's enormous popularity, I have yet to read any of her books. 

Do any of these look good to you? Where would you start?

TBR 23 in '23 and Mt. TBR Challenges -- My Sign Up Post & Wrap Up Post

 

THE TBR 23 IN '23 CHALLENGE

COMPLETED

This is my sign up post for the TBR 23 in '23 Challenge. The simple idea is to read 23 books off your TBR shelves between January 1 and December 31, 2023. If you want to join me (and I hope you do), go to the main challenge page here to sign up. You can participate through your blog, social media, or just in the comments on the challenge pages.

You do not have to pick all your TBR 23 in '23 books ahead of time. I like to, so I do. You can pick them now. Or you can pick some now and some as you go. You can pick them all at whim. Or you can pick now and then change your mind. The only real rule is that you read books that you already owned before January 1, 2023. Find all the rules on the challenge page.

MY TBR 23 IN '23 BOOKS

I like to pick my books ahead of time and keep them stacked by my bedside to motivate me through the year. These are all books that have been on my shelves for so long I want to read them so I can stop looking at them! One has been on my shelf since 1982!!

Here's a list of what is in this basket, listed in alphabetical order by author name, not as shown in the picture above. I may read them in this order because I have no other plan.

• The History Man by Malcolm Bradbury. Campus novels are my favorite sub-genre and this one is a classic.

• Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There by David Brooks, now out of date social commentary, which happens when I leave books on my TBR shelf for so long. 

• Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen by Laurie Colwin. I can't wait to get to this one and have More Home Cooking I plan to slip in as well. 

• The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy is a NYRB Classic that gets lots of social media love for it's awesome cover. 

• Mrs. Ted Bliss by Stanley Elkin. This is on my shelf because it won the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award in 1995. I want to read it now because I read Francine Prose's praise of Elkin in her book, What to Read and Why.

• A Cordiall Water: A Garland of Odd and Old Receipts to Assuage the Ills of Man and Beast by M.F.K. Fisher, one of her few books I haven't read yet.

• In Search of a Character: Two African Journals by Graham Greene. He's a big favorite of mine but I've not read his nonfiction before.

• The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff is a book I found in a Little Free Library and it looked interesting, if not my usual cup of tea. I'll give it a go, although I did not like Fates & Furies. 

• Mystical Paths by Susan Howatch is the last of five novels in her Church of England series, which I really enjoyed.

• Mystic River by Dennis Lehane. I can't believe I've never read this. 

• Scandinavian Noir: In Pursuit of a Mystery by Wendy Lesser. My law partner gave this to me for Christmas two years ago and I forgot about it!

• Black Dogs by Ian McEwan is one of his earliest books and has sat on my shelf a long time. 

• The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession by Susan Orlean. Another contemporary classic I can't believe I haven't read yet.

• Oregon Confetti by Lee Oser is a book that caught my eye a few years back then got lost on my shelf. It looks excellent. 

• The Cloister and the Hearth by Charles Reade. This is the one I bought in high school in 1982 and have carted around ever since. It is time I finally read it!

• The Tuscan Year: Life and Food in an Italian Valley by Elizabeth Romer is one of the many ex pat memoirs lingering on my shelves. 

• The Complete Lord Peter Wimsey Stories by Dorothy L. Sayers. I finished the last of the Wimsey novels last year but never get around to the short stories. Time to fix that. 

• The Driver's Seat by Muriel Spark looks terrific. 

• S. by John Updike is a modern retelling of The Scarlet Letter, which sounds very good. 

• Know Your Style: Mix It, Match It, Love It by Alyson Walsh is a fun little book about fashion for women of a certain age. 

• The Spring by Megan Weiler is a novel about an American ex pat living Tuscany. It's a book club pick so i will read it sooner rather than later, and maybe follow it with the Tuscan memoir.

• The Bear Comes Home by Rafi Zabor won the 1998 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction and is about a jazz saxophone playing bear in New York City. OK. I'll give it a try.

THE MT. TBR CHALLENGE

COMPLETED

This TBR 23 in '23 Challenge dovetails nicely with the Mt TBR Challenge that Bev at My Reader's Block hosts every year. Like I've done for the past couple of years, I am signing up for the "Mt. Kilimanjaro" Level in 2023 to read a total of 60 books off my TBR shelves. That means 37 books in addition to those listed above.

MY MT. TBR BOOKS

I will try to remember to list my Mt. TBR books here as I read them, although I completely forgot this last year.

UPDATE: Indeed, I forgot to list the books as I went along, but here they are. I read 63 books off my TBR shelves, in addition to my 23 TBR 23 in '23 books, for a total of 86 books off my TBR shelves -- my best year ever!

• Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan

• Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens (abridged)

• The Big Four by Agatha Christie

• Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh

• Playing for the Ashes by Elizabeth George

• A German Requiem by Philip Kerr

• Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene

• Waverley by Sir Walter Scott

• Resurrection Men by Ian Rankin

• The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister

• Rule Britannia by Daphne du Maurier

• The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton

• Winston Churchill: Painting on the French Riviera by Paul Rafferty

• Slightly Foxed, No. 25, Edited by Gail Pirkis

• A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne

• The Flight of the Falcon by Daphne du Maurier

• The Holy Bible, King James Version

• On Cussing: Bad Words and Creative Cursing by Katherine Dunn

• In the Presence of the Enemy by Elizabeth George

• Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

• So Big by Edna Ferber

• The Magic Barrel by Bernard Malamud

• Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz

• Mapp & Lucia by E. F. Benson

• Deception on His Mind by Elizabeth George

• More Home Cooking: A Writer Returns to the Kitchen by Laurie Colwin

• Lucia's Progress by E. F. Benson

• Kingdom of the Blind by Louise Penny

• Trouble for Lucia by E. F. Benson

• The Grave Gourmet by Alexander Campion

• Assignment in Brittany by Helen MacInnes

• A Simple Country Murder by Blythe Baker

• In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner by Elizabeth George

• Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh

• The Sellout by Paul Beatty

• A Better Man by Louise Penny

• The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham

• The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

• Dusk and Other Stories by James Salter

• Snow by John Banville

• After Many a Summer Dies the Swan by Aldous Huxley

• My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier

• The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron

• Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham

• A Traitor to Memory by Elizabeth George

• Mating by Norman Rush

• The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte

• The Chosen by Chaim Potok

• Hungry Hill by Daphne du Maurier

• The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens

• The Collected Poems by W. B. Yeats

• The Long Good-Bye by Raymond Chandler

• Black Mischief by Evelyn Waugh

• The Man with Two Left Feet by P. G. Wodehouse

• Lost for Words by Edward St. Aubyn

• A Place of Hiding by Elizabeth George

• Innocent Blood by P. D. James

• Straight Man by Richard Russo

• Piccadilly Jim by P. G. Wodehouse

• The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham

• Even Dogs in the Wild by Ian Rankin

• Aqua Alta by Donna Leon

• War & Peace by Leo Tolstoy

PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction Winners -- BOOK LIST

PEN/FAULKNER AWARD FOR FICTION

The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction honors the "best published works of fiction by American permanent residents in a calendar year." 

National Book Award winner Mary Lee Settle, with help from her friends, organized the award in 1980 as a peer-reviewed competitor of the National Book Award. They allied themselves with the Ineternational PEN organization (Poets, Editors, and Novelists) and named the award after William Faulkner who donated his Nobel Prize money to fund the award.

I am not going to keep updating the winners after 2021. My enthusiasm for prize-winners is waning with the 2020s. I may focus my efforts on reading the winners up to 2020 then declare victory and move on to other bookish projects.

Here is the list of all the winners, with notes if I've read the book, it is on my TBR shelf, or if it is available as an audiobook on Overdrive from my library. So far, I've only read 14 of the winners.

2021 The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw ON OVERDRIVE

2020 Sea Monsters by Chloe Aridjis ON OVERDRIVE

2019 Call Me Zebra by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi ON OVERDRIVE

2018 Improvement by Joan Silber ON OVERDRIVE

2017 Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue ON OVERDRIVE

2016 Delicious Foods by James Hannaham ON OVERDRIVE

2015 Preparation for the Next Life by Atticus Lish

2014 We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler FINISHED

2013 Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

2012 The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka ON OVERDRIVE

2011 The Collected Stories by Deborah Eisenberg

2010 War Dances by Sherman Alexie ON OVERDRIVE

2009 Netherland by Joseph O'Neill ON OVERDRIVE

2008 The Great Man by Kate Christensen TBR SHELF

2007 Everyman by Philip Roth FINISHED

2006 The March by E. L. Doctorow ON OVERDRIVE

2005 War Trash by Ha Jin TBR SHELF

2004 The Early Stories: 1953-1975 by John Updike TBR SHELF

2003 The Caprices by Sabina Murray TBR SHELF

2002 Bel Canto by Ann Patchett (reviewed here) FINISHED

2001 The Human Stain by Philip Roth (reviewed here) FINISHED

2000 Waiting by Ha Jin FINISHED

1999 The Hours by Michael Cunningham FINISHED

1998 The Bear Comes Home by Rafi Zabor FINISHED

1997 Women in Their Beds: New and Selected Stories by Gina Berriault TBR SHELF

1996 Independence Day by Richard Ford FINISHED

1995 Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson FINISHED

1994 Operation Shylock: A Confession by Philip Roth FINISHED

1993 Postcards by E. Annie Proulx FINISHED

1992 Mao II by Don Delillo FINISHED

1991 Philadelphia Fire by John Edgar Wideman

1990 Billy Bathgate by E. L. Doctorow FINISHED

1989 Dusk and Other Stories by James Salter FINISHED

1988 World's End by T. Coraghessan Boyle

1987 Soldiers in Hiding by Richard Wiley TBR SHELF

1986 The Old Forest and Other Stories by Peter Taylor

1985 The Barracks Thief by Tobias Wolff

1984 Sent for You Yesterday by John Edgar Wideman

1983 Seaview by Toby Olson TBR SHELF

1982 The Chaneysville Incident by David Bradley

1981 How German Is It = Wie Deutsch Ist Es by Walter Abish TBR SHELF



NOTES

Updated July 3, 2025. 

This is a redo of the list I first posted in 2010. The links needed a refresh! 

 

Billy Bathgate by E. L. Doctorow - BOOK BEGINNINGS and THE FRIDAY 56

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Welcome to Book Beginnings on Fridays, where we share the first sentence or so of the book we are enjoying this week. You can play along on your own blog, social media, or in the comments below.

If you post on your blog or social media, please link to your post in the linky below. Please link to your BBOF post not your home page or social media profile. If you want to participate in the comments, just leave a comment with the opening sentence of the book, along with the title and author's name. 

If you post or share on social media, please use the #bookbeginnings hashtag so we can find each other. 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

I'm making a big effort -- a bigger effort than usual -- to clear off my TBR shelves in 2021. With that goal in mind, I'm reading Billy Bathgate by E. L. Doctorow this week because it has been on my TBR shelf for as long as I can remember. 

He had to have planned it because when we drove onto the dock the boat was there and the engine was running and you could see the water churning up phosphorescence in the river, which was the only light there was because there was no moon, nor no electric light either in the shack where the dockmaster should have been sitting, nor on the boat itself, and certainly not from the car, yet everyone knew where everything was, and when the big Packard came down the ramp Mickey the driver braked it so that the wheels hardly rattled the boards, and when he pulled up alongside the gangway the doors were already open and they hustled Bo and the girl upside before they even made a shadow in all that darkness.

Wow! That is quite a shaggy opening sentence. It's an entire story in itself. Billy Bathgate won the 1989 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 1990 PEN/Faulkner Award. 

I didn't care for Ragtime, even though most people love it, so I put this one off. But I'm now halfway through and enjoying it very much. Ragtime bugged me because it seemed to me a bucket of historic facts dumped out and then strung together like beads by the story. Although Billy Bathgate is based on the criminal history of New York gangster Dutch Schultz, it is a solid, cohesive story.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

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THE FRIDAY 56

TIE IN: The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice is a natural tie in with this event and there is a lot of cross over, so many people combine the two. The idea is to post a teaser from page 56 of the book you are reading and share a link to your post. Find details and the Linky for your Friday 56 post on Freda’s Voice.

MY FRIDAY 56

From Billy Bathgate

It surprised me that someone that physically unfortunate would want to dress sharply. His trousers were pulled up so high by his suspenders that he seemed not to have any chest.

Doctorow is a good storyteller. He spins a yarn so you can picture everything precisely. 

Book Begininng: We are All Completely Beside Ourselves

THANKS FOR JOINING ME ON FRIDAYS FOR BOOK BEGINNING FUN!

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author’s name.

EARLY BIRDS & SLOWPOKES: This weekly post goes up Thursday evening for those who like to get their posts up and linked early on. But feel free to add a link all week.

FACEBOOK: Rose City Reader has a Facebook page where I post about new and favorite books, book events, and other bookish tidbits, as well as link to blog posts. I'd love a "Like" on the page! You can go to the page here to Like it. I am happy to Like you back if you have a blog or professional Facebook page, so please leave a comment with a link and I will find you.

TWITTER, ETC: If you are on Twitter, Google+, or other social media, please post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I try to follow all Book  Beginnings participants on whatever interweb sites you are on, so please let me know if I have missed any and I will catch up.

TIE IN: The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice is a natural tie in with this event and there is a lot of cross over, so many people combine the two. The idea is to post a teaser from page 56 of the book you are reading and share a link to your post. Find details and the Linky for your Friday 56 post on Freda’s Voice.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING



MY BOOK BEGINNING

So the middle of my story comes in the winter of 1996.

-- We are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler. This provocative novel about a family that tried to twin a chimp with a child won the PEN/Faulkner Award in 2014.

I like the sidelong reference to the classic rule of starting a story in medias res.

Mailbox Monday

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring event. Mailbox Monday has now returned to its permanent home where you can link to your MM post.

The Friends of the Multnomah County Library had their Spring Sale this weekend, so I got a short stack of books:



Slam by Nick Hornby



Netherland by Joseph O'Neill, 2009 winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award



The Columnist by Jeffrey Frank. A satire of Washington, D.C.



The Track of Sand by Andrea Camilleri. A mystery set in Sicily.



The Killing Ground by Mary Lee Settle. She won the National Book Award for Blood Tie and she started the PEN/Faulkner Award.



A Misalliance by Anita Brookner

Book Beginning: Dusk and Other Stories by James Salter

HAPPY BOXING DAY!

I hope that everyone who celebrated Christmas got wonderful books for presents!

THANKS FOR JOINING ME ON FRIDAYS FOR BOOK BEGINNING FUN!

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author’s name.

EARLY BIRDS & SLOWPOKES: This weekly post goes up Thursday evening for those who like to get their posts up and linked early on. But feel free to add a link all week.

FACEBOOK: Rose City Reader has a Facebook page where I post about new and favorite books, book events, and other bookish tidbits, as well as link to blog posts. I'd love a "Like" on the page! You can go to the page here to Like it. I am happy to Like you back if you have a blog or professional Facebook page, so please leave a comment with a link and I will find you.

TWITTER, ETC: If you are on Twitter, Google+, or other social media, please post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I try to follow all Book  Beginnings participants on whatever interweb sites you are on, so please let me know if I have missed any and I will catch up.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING



MY BOOK BEGINNING

Barcelona at dawn. The hotels are dark.

-- from "Am Strande von Tanger," the first story in Dusk and Other Stories by James Salter. This won the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1989.

Teaser Tuesday: Soldiers in Hiding

Just then Kazuko came back carrying the ingredients for tea on a flat wooden tray.  She pushed the tray into the room as a woman in a restaurant might and then slid in after it.

-- Soldiers in Hiding by Richard Wiley. This is the story of a Japanese-American jazz musician trapped in Tokyo after Pearl Harbor and drafted into the Japanese Army.  It takes place 30 years after the war, as he struggles with his own war guilt.

Soldiers in Hiding won the 1987 PEN/Faulkner Award.  This edition is published by  Hawthorne Books, with a new preface by the author.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event. 

Opening Sentence of the New Year: Soldiers in Hiding

It gives me pleasure to hinder American tourists occasionally.

-- Soldiers in Hiding by Richard Wiley.

A Bambara proverb goes thus: "go to the village where you don't have a house, but take your roof with you." 

-- from the new Introduction by Wole Soyinka, winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Soldiers in Hiding won the 1987 PEN/Faulkner Award.  This edition is published by  Hawthorne Books & Literary Arts, with a new preface by the author.




A Few More Pages hosts Book Beginnings every Friday.  The event is open for the entire week.

Review of the Day: Leaving Brooklyn

At my law office, we have a word for 15-year-old girls who have a sexual relationship with their 37-year-old doctors – we call them “clients.” I spend my days suing child molesters and the institutions that allowed the abuse. So the fact that I could set aside my professional and personal outlook and be swept up in this novel is a testament to Lynn Sharon Schwartz’s literary gifts.

In Leaving Brooklyn, Schwartz spins a post-war coming-of-age story out of the heroine’s damaged eye. Audrey is legally blind in her right eye, a lazy eye prone to wander on its own. The eye gives Audrey a creative, imaginary way of seeing “behind” things, including ideas. Her eye is the center point for the story; it is also a metaphor for the inward gaze that perfectly captures the mind of a 15-year-old girl.

Audrey feels stifled by what she considers the narrow-mindedness of her Brooklyn neighborhood. She escapes Brooklyn, and ultimately her childhood, through a series of weekly sexual encounters with her Manhattan eye doctor.

Schwartz tells the story as a memoir that entwines the adult Audrey’s perceptions with the child’s. In moving between the two – and in recognizing the ambiguity inherent in memory and perception – she paints an accurately ephemeral portrait of Audrey as “Everywoman.”

NOTES

Leaving Brooklyn by Lynn Sharon Schwartz was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner. This super cool Hawthorne Books & Literary Arts edition has a new introduction by Ursula Hegi.

OTHER REVIEWS

(If you would like your review posted here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.)

List: PEN/Faulkner Award Winners

The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction is a national prize honoring "the best published works of fiction by American citizens in a calendar year." It is the largest peer-juried award in the country.

The award was founded in 1980 by members of the international writers’ organization PEN and is now governed by an independent foundation board. Named for William Faulkner, who used his Nobel Prize money to create an award for young writers, the aim of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation is to bring together "American writers and readers in a wide variety of programs to promote a love of literature."

So far, I have read 10 winners and have another 11 on my TBR shelf. Those I have read are in red; those currently on my TBR shelf are in blue.

2018 Improvement by Joan Silber

2017 Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue

2016 Delicious Foods by James Hannaham

2015 Preparation for the Next Life by Atticus Lish

2014 We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

2013 Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

2012 The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka

2011 The Collected Stories by Deborah Eisenberg

2010 War Dances by Sherman Alexie

2009 Netherland by Joseph O'Neill

2008 The Great Man by Kate Christensen

2007 Everyman by Philip Roth

2006 The March by E L Doctorow

2005 War Trash by Ha Jin

2004 The Early Stories: 1953-1975 by John Updike

2003 The Caprices by Sabina Murray

2002 Bel Canto by Ann Patchett (reviewed here)

2001 The Human Stain by Philip Roth (reviewed here)

2000 Waiting by Ha Jin

1999 The Hours by Michael Cunningham

1998 The Bear Comes Home by Rafi Zabor

1997 Women in Their Beds: New and Selected Stories by Gina Berriault

1996 Independence Day by Richard Ford

1995 Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson

1994 Operation Shylock: A Confession by Philip Roth

1993 Postcards by E. Annie Proulx

1992 Mao II by Don Delillo

1991 Philadelphia Fire by John Edgar Wideman

1990 Billy Bathgate by E. L. Doctorow

1989 Dusk and Other Stories by James Salter

1988 World's End by T. Coraghessan Boyle

1987 Soldiers in Hiding by Richard Wiley

1986 The Old Forest and Other Stories by Peter Taylor

1985 The Barracks Thief by Tobias Wolff

1984 Sent for You Yesterday by John Edgar Wideman

1983 Seaview by Toby Olson

1982 The Chaneysville Incident by David Bradley

1981 How German Is It = Wie Deutsch Ist Es by Walter Abish

NOTE

Updated DXecember 31, 2018.

OTHERS WORKING ON THIS LIST

If you are reading these books and would like related posts to be listed here, please leave comments with links and I will add them.