My Challenge to Read All the National Book Award Winners

Yes, the full list of National Book Award winners for the past 63 years. Now, I’ve read the award saw some dark days in the late 70s and early 80s. Times where they veered from the past and current spirit of the award. I’ll update the list once I’ve read a book from it, but there may be a few I turn up a nose to.

1950	Nelson Algren	The Man with the Golden Arm
1951	William Faulkner	The Collected Stories of William Faulkner
1952	James Jones	From Here to Eternity
1953	Ralph Ellison	Invisible Man [rating=4]
1954	Saul Bellow	The Adventures of Augie March
1955	William Faulkner	A Fable
1956	John O’Hara	Ten North Frederick
1957	Wright Morris	The Field of Vision
1958	John Cheever	The Wapshot Chronicle
1959	Bernard Malamud	The Magic Barrel
1960	Philip Roth	Goodbye, Columbus
1961	Conrad Richter	The Waters of Kronos
1962	Walker Percy	The Moviegoer
1963	J. F. Powers	Morte d’Urban
1964	John Updike	The Centaur
1965	Saul Bellow	Herzog
1966	Katherine Anne Porter	The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter
1967	Bernard Malamud	The Fixer
1968	Thornton Wilder	The Eighth Day
1969	Jerzy Kosinski	Steps
1970	Joyce Carol Oates	them
1971	Saul Bellow	Mr. Sammler’s Planet
1972	Flannery O’Connor	The Complete Stories
1973	John Barth	Chimera
^[a]	John Edward Williams	Augustus
1974	Thomas Pynchon	Gravity’s Rainbow
^[b]	Isaac Bashevis Singer	A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories
1975	Robert Stone	Dog Soldiers
^[c]	Thomas Williams	The Hair of Harold Roux
1976	William Gaddis	J R
1977	Wallace Stegner	The Spectator Bird
1978	Mary Lee Settle	Blood Tie
1979	Tim O’Brien	Going After Cacciato

1980	William Styron	Sophie’s Choice [rating=5]
1980	John Irving	The World According to Garp [rating=5]
1981	Wright Morris	Plains Song: For Female Voices
1981	John Cheever	The Stories of John Cheever
1982	John Updike	Rabbit is Rich
1982	William Maxwell	So Long, See You Tomorrow
1983	Alice Walker	The Color Purple
1983	Eudora Welty	The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty
1984	Ellen Gilchrist	Victory Over Japan: A Book of Stories
1985	Don DeLillo	White Noise [rating=5]
1986	E.L. Doctorow	World’s Fair
1987	Larry Heinemann	Paco’s Story
1988	Pete Dexter	Paris Trout
1989	John Casey	Spartina
1990	Charles Johnson	Middle Passage
1991	Norman Rush	Mating
1992	Cormac McCarthy	All the Pretty Horses
1993	E. Annie Proulx	The Shipping News
1994	William Gaddis	A Frolic of His Own
1995	Philip Roth	Sabbath’s Theater
1996	Andrea Barrett	Ship Fever and Other Stories
1997	Charles Frazier	Cold Mountain
1998	Alice McDermott	Charming Billy
1999	Ha Jin	Waiting [rating=5]
2000	Susan Sontag	In America
2001	Jonathan Franzen	The Corrections
2002	Julia Glass	Three Junes
2003	Shirley Hazzard	The Great Fire
2004	Lily Tuck	The News from Paraguay
2005	William T. Vollmann	Europe Central
2006	Richard Powers	The Echo Maker
2007	Denis Johnson	Tree of Smoke
2008	Peter Matthiessen	Shadow Country
2009	Colum McCann	Let the Great World Spin
2010	Jaimy Gordon	Lord of Misrule
2011	Jesmyn Ward	Salvage the Bones
2012	Louise Erdrich	The Round House [rating=5]
2013	James McBride	The Good Lord Bird [rating=5]