For several years now, Gilion at Rose City Reader has been hosting the Battle of the Prizes – both British and American. I’ve been meaning to hop on quite a few times and finally did for 2012.

The British version pitted winners of the English Man Booker Prize against winners of the Scottish James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

To meet the goal, I needed to read one book that won both of those awards; a book that won the Booker Prize, and another that has won the James Tait Black Prize. That’s a total of three books.

I’m happy to report

SUCCESS!

with these three books:

Man Booker Prize winner:
The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

James Tait Black Memorial Prize winner:
Men at Arms by Evelyn Waugh

Double Winner:
Midnight’s Children

Based on this selection, I prefer winners of the James Tait Memorial Prize, but it’s really much too limited a sample to decide.

* * * * *

The American version of the battle contrasts the winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Literaure and the National Book Award.

Since I had no interest in reading any of the double winners that I’ve not read, I chose the ‘b’ option: to read two winners of each prize.

SUCCESS!

Pulitzer Prize winners:
1. The Bridge of San Luis Rey By Thornton Wilder (1928)
2. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (1953) (read Dec 2012)

National Book Award winners:
1. Three Junes by Julia Glass (2002)
2. The Echo Maker by Richard Powers (2006) (read Dec 2012)

Again, this is really a very small sample and I realize that I’m comparing literature from different eras, but I’m not crazy about the National winners. They seem to tend toward popular, rather than literary, fiction.