When Books Win Multiple Awards, Does That Make Them Better? A Book Award Round Up

Hello!

Today I have a few books to share with you, including a couple books that seem to have made some waves this year, winning multiple awards. I’m never sure if winning so many awards means books are truly great. Sometimes I really love them, and sometimes I wonder if everyone jumping on the same train has more to to with marketing than with quality? I also feel like authors work so hard for minimal reward, and when one author wins so many cash prizes, it can feel unfair. What do you think?

On the other side of the coin, there was a double award for the Pulitzer this year (for the first time ever). This happened a couple years ago with the Booker Prize and sparked some controversy. There seems to be less controversy about this split. However, I generally am suspicious of this – picking one book as the “best” book is always subjective, so I find it hard to understand why two books would win unless there was something else going on.

I also have a few other recent award winning books that caught my eye – a really intriguing memoir, a fun-sounding dysfunctional family mystery with some social commentary on race and assimilation thrown in, and a non-fiction book with a really fascinating perspective.

Multiple Award Winning Books (and Awards with Multiple Winners)

Horse by Geraldine Brooks (Ansfield Wolfe Award and The Indie Book Awards (Australia))

I read and loved Year of Wonders years ago, but I will admit that I don’t have much of a sense of who Geraldine Brooks *is* as a writer, although her books definitely seem to get a lot of attention and love. This is a book I don’t know that I would have picked up if it hadn’t gotten so much award attention. However, I am intrigued because it has gotten both big book award buzz as well as having won some smaller awards, which is unusual.

Babel by R.F. Kuang (Nebula Award, British Book Award, Alex Award)

I am going to start with the fact that I was really excited for this book, and I did really like it. I just didn’t LOVE it, and that came down to what I felt to be clumsy pacing and the fact that I felt that the character development and the plot often clashed. The world building in this book was exceptional, the concept was near perfect, and the social commentary was really well thought out. In the end though, it missed something and I am not sure exactly what it was – it just felt like the whole story was being told in one giant breath and it was a little exhausting. I have found that this is a common issue I have with chunky novels – I often feel like they either need to be tighter and more streamlined, or it needs to be a trilogy, and this was the case for Babel.

With that being said, this book has won ALL the awards this year, and I am left feeling like I might have missed something? It really wasn’t a bad book at all, I just don’t know that it was the BEST book written in the year.

Pulitzer: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver and Trust by Hernan Diaz

As I mentioned above, I am looking at this double award with a little bit of side eye – I haven’t read either of these books, so I really shouldn’t comment. I did find a fascinating deep dive into this, that you can read here! I’m not questioning whether or not they are good books – just the need for both of them to win (at the very least, it feels mean to the third finalist, The Immortal King Rao by Vauhini Vara)!

Other Interesting Reads

The Edgar Award: Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka

I read Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line (a previous Edgar award winner), and found it to be a really fascinating and refreshing take on a mystery. Notes on an Execution, has a wildly different premise (it is the story of a convicted serial killer as told through the eyes of the women in his life), but it seems to have the alternative take on what a mystery novel could be, and I am really excited to check this one out.

Ansfield Wolf Award: The Family Chao by Lan Samantha Chang

This is the story of what happens when the patriarch of the eponymous family Chao is murdered, and it sounds like an excellent romp of a mystery with enough social commentary to feel like it has some teeth. I’m absolutely interesting in picking this one up.

Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature: Love the Dark Days by Ira Mathur

The Bocas prize, which focuses on literature by authors of Caribbean birth or citizenship, with books usually written in English, is such an interesting prize. It is currently being chaired by Bernardine Evaristo, author of Girl, Woman, Other (and one of the two authors who split the Booker Prize a couple years ago). Love in the Dark Days, which is a memoir that looks at the multicultural and international roots of the author from India to the Caribbean and it looks to be a really interesting read.

The Indie Book Awards (Australia): The Book Of Roads And Kingdoms by Richard Fidler

I do love a weird history narrative nonfiction with an obscure subject, and this book fits that description to a T. It is the story of the medieval wanderers who traveled out to the edges of the known world during Islam’s fabled Golden Age, and I am so fascinated by it!