No Winner for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction?

Via Omnivoracious

The 2012 Pulitzer prizewinners and nominated finalists were announced today, and there was no winner for the Fiction Prize. Last year's winner was Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad.

This year's finalists in fiction were Train Dreams by Denis Johnson, Swamplandia! by Karen Russell, and The Pale King by David Foster Wallace.

Well, that’s interesting. The last time no award was given out for Fiction was 1977. Before that, 1974 and 1971. In total, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction has not been awarded ten times. This includes the period from 1918 to 1947 when it was the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel.

I am very far behind on my Pulitzer Prize reading, so at the very least, the committee has given me an additional year to help catch up without an additional winner.

Looking at the history of the award, I’ve always wondered what went on behind the scenes for the jury to arrive at “No Award” as the best option. I assume it’s the inability to find consensus, but I’d just love to get more of the story on how that came to be – this year and previous years.

Below are the other winners of this year’s Pulitzer:

LETTERS, DRAMA and MUSIC

Fiction - No award
Drama - "Water by the Spoonful" by Quiara Alegría Hudes
History - Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, by the late Manning Marable (Viking)
Biography - George F. Kennan: An American Life, by John Lewis Gaddis (The Penguin Press)
Poetry - Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith (Graywolf Press)
General Nonfiction - The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, by Stephen Greenblatt (W.W. Norton and Company)
Music - Silent Night: Opera in Two Acts by Kevin Puts (Aperto Press)

JOURNALISM

Public Service - The Philadelphia Inquirer
Breaking News Reporting - The Tuscaloosa (Ala.) News Staff
Investigative Reporting - Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman, Eileen Sullivan and Chris Hawley of the Associated Press and Michael J. Berens and Ken Armstrong of The Seattle Times
Explanatory Reporting - David Kocieniewski of The New York Times
Local Reporting - Sara Ganim and members of The Patriot-News Staff, Harrisburg, Penn
National Reporting - David Wood of The Huffington Post
International Reporting - Jeffrey Gettleman of The New York Times
Feature Writing - Eli Sanders of The Stranger, a Seattle (Wash.) weekly
Commentary - Mary Schmich of the Chicago Tribune
Criticism -Wesley Morris of The Boston Globe
Editorial Writing - No award
Editorial Cartooning - Matt Wuerker of POLITICO
Breaking News Photography - Massoud Hossaini of Agence France-Presse
Feature Photography - Craig F. Walker of The Denver Post

19 Books I'm Looking Forward to in 2012

This is the fifth time I've attempted to put together a list of the books I am most looking forward to in the coming year.  I'm a little bit late on this one, but here you go. 

This is the first year I’ve posted one of these lists without including either a Wheel of Time novel or a George R. R. Martin book. Of course, the only reason for this is that A Memory of Light was pushed back from November 2012 to January 2013. But there it is. On the plus side, we’ve still got some Scott Lynch to look forward to. Maybe. 

More or less in order.  Sort of.

1. Republic of Thieves, by Scott Lynch: Oh, Gentleman Bastards, how I would like to read more of you. And yet, my real desire is for Scott Lynch’s health and well being. Take care of yourself, Scott. The book will come when it does.

2. Caine’s Law, by Matthew Stover (April): How in the world did I not know this was coming until just now? It’s a new Caine novel! You know, Heroes Die, Blade of Tyshalle, and Caine Black Knife. asskicking awesome fantasy/ sci-fi blend. The usual stuff that you simply must read.

3. Range of Ghosts, by Elizabeth Bear (March): New Fantasy Series. Elizabeth Bear. I am there.

4. Touchstone, by Melanie Rawn (February): I have such high hopes for this book. Rawn is the author of the excellent Dragon Prince and Dragon Star trilogies, but after beginning (and not finishing) her Exiles trilogy, Rawn took a long time off (for a very good reason), but returned to write two books in a now cancelled paranormal romance series. This (along with last year’s Golden Key prequel) marks her return to a more traditional epic fantasy series. Can’t wait!

5. The Coldest War, by Ian Tregillis (July): It’s about time that Tor got their stuff together and finally published this second volume of the Milkweed Triptych. Bitter Seeds was an excellent debut and The Coldest War had been on the shelf for waaaay too long.

6. Redshirts, by John Scalzi (June): New Scalzi.

7. Kitty Steals the Show, by Carrie Vaughn (August): Compulsively readable, Vaughn’s Kitty Norville novels are the ultimate summer crack. This is the 10th Kitty novel and Vaughn shows no sign of losing steam.

8. Arctic Rising, by Tobias Buckell (February): I’ve long been a fan of Buckell’s Xenowealth sequence and while he’s taken off quite a bit of time from that, here he delivers a near future climate-change novel.

9. Existence, by David Brin (July): New Brin! This sounds like it has touches of what made Earth such a cool and prescient novel.

10. ad eternum, by Elizabeth Bear (March): This is, presumably, the final Abby Irene novella from Bear.  I shall miss them.

11. Glamour in Glass, by Mary Robinette Kowal (April): It’s a mark of Kowal’s skill that I’m looking forward to the sequel to a book that could reasonably be pitched as “Jane Austen with magic”.

12. Wake of the Bloody Angel, by Alex Bledsoe (July): New Eddie LaCrosse novel.

13. Red Country, by Joe Abercrombie (November):Another tale told in the world of The First Law. All I really ask for is for some face-in-the-mud unpleasantness and battles as told with the evil snark of Joe Abercrombie. Is that too much to ask for? I don’t think that it is.

14. Inexplicable, by Cherie Priest (Fall): The fourth Clockwork Century novel. I need to read Ganymede, but more Cherie Priest is always a good thing.

15. Lowball, by George R. R. Martin (editor): I still need to catch up on Fort Freak and Books 9 – 17, but a new Wild Cards volume is a happy day for me.

16. Eclipse Five, by Jonathan Strahan (May): Strahan’s name on an anthology is enough to make me take a second look, but his Eclipse volumes are an automatic purchase. It’s a fantastic original anthology series and what I like best is that it’s unthemed.

17. Boneyards, by Kristine Kathryn Rusch (January): I loved Diving into the Wreck and then somehow managed to not read City of Ruins (the sequel). Here is book three. I’d better get cracking.

18. Devils’s Wake, by Steven Barnes and Tananarive Due: It’s an apocalyptic novel with aliens. And zombies, of sorts. I’m down with that.

19. After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall, by Nancy Kress (April): I tend to enjoy what Nancy Kress writes and here you’ve got some interesting combination of a post apocalyptic world, aliens, and time travel.

I could probably make another list or three of all the books I'm looking forward to.  Here, I've mostly stuck with the SFF genre.  Step outside of the genre, and the list will grow exponentially.

So.  What do YOU want to read this year?