Pulitzer Prize Winners

Today they are announcing the 2009 winner of the Pulitizer Prize for Literature. You know the Pulitzer Prize for literature, right? Last year's winner was The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. And of course, there are the famous 'other' winners from years' past: you've heard of the Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck, Beloved by Toni Morrison, even that 1936 novel by Margaret Mitchell is familiar (Gone with the Wind won in 1937). And it would seem that winning a big literary prize like the Pulitzer Prize for Literature would make novels live on in history being made into movies, spending years in various discussion groups, and of course being added to High School English Reading lists, like prize winning books are wont to do. I recently ran across a list of the Pulitzer Prize winners for Literature from years past and here's the thing: What? .... Who? I doubt one single one of these prize winning books would have made it through our first round of weeding. Check out this list. I'd be interested if anyone has read any of these:

His Family by Ernest Poole, 1918

Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield, 1927

Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin, 1929

Laughing Boy by Oliver Lafarge, 1930

Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes, 1931

The Store by T.S. Stribling, 1933

Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Miller, 1934

Now in November by Josephine Winslow Johnson, 1935

Honey in the Horn by Harold L. Davis, 1936

In This Our Life by Ellen Glasgow, 1942

Journey in the Dark by Martin Flavin, 1944

Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens, 1949

The Way West by A.B. Guthrie, 1950

The Town by Conrad Richter, 1951

The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor, 1959

Stay Tuned. We'll see who won this year's award!