Wrap-Up for My James Tait Black Project

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Announcement of a Review-Along!

Before I plunge into my topic, FictionFan and I are announcing a Review-Along of the works of Henrik Pontoppidan, the Danish Nobel Prize for Literature winner (1917). We both chose his most famous book to read, A Fortunate Man (also known as Lucky Per), but readers are welcome to choose any of his works that are available. We’re aiming for March, as A Fortunate Man is a real doorstopper! See the details at FictionFan’s announcement post here!

James Tait Black Fiction Prize Wrap-Up

A few years ago, I decided to add the James Tait Black Fiction Prize to my shortlist projects. However, after a while I felt like I was reading too much British fiction as opposed to American or fiction from other countries, since all my prize projects were Brit-based and I also read a lot of reprinted British fiction. So, I dropped the James Tait in 2023 and added the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. For the James Tait, I started my list back a few years, at 2010.

When I was just trying to wrap up this project by finishing the few books I had left to read, some fellow bloggers asked me if I would provide a wrap-up post for my reading. So, here it is, for the shortlisted books from 2010-2023, I know I’m finishing a few years later, but many of the books for this project were never available from my library, so I waited to see if they would become available and at the end, had to buy them. That hasn’t been a problem with my Booker or Pulitzer projects, although it has sometimes affected my Walter Scott Fiction Prize project.

The Data

Thanks to a request by FictionFan, I am providing data about my project. I am not a data person, so bear with me.

I began this project October 6, 2017, and decided to wrap it up in 2023. I finished reading on October 4, 2025, but it’s taken me this long to schedule the final two reviews. I posted my last review last Thursday, November 20, 2025.

Number of books read for project: 57

Ratings in The StoryGraph

Keep in mind that until 2025, I stored this data in Goodreads, which does not allow fractional ratings. There were only two books in the list that had fractional ratings, so I rounded them down. I am not really happy with 1-5 ratings, because to me, a 3.25 rating (a little bit better than 3, which is my meh rating), for example, is a lot different than a 3.75 rating (almost a 4).

Yes, I made some charts! It’s been a long time since I used Excel, so pardon me for any awkwardness. As you can see below, most of the books were rated either 3 (green) or 4 (blue).

Author Information

Number of female authors: 34; Number of male authors: 22

Note that one author made the shortlist twice.

I made a chart for author nationality. This chart is off by one because Sarah Hall is listed twice in my data, and I couldn’t figure out how to exclude one of her from this chart. So, there is one extra count for “English.” I used nationality as listed in Wikipedia, which for some authors listed two. Where are the Canadian authors, guys?

Settings

This answer was difficult, because some settings were unspecified while other books were set in several places, and one was just “Europe.” The chart I generated was unpleasing, so here is the data entered by hand for number of books in a setting:

U. S.: 17
England: 13
Ireland: 2
Scotland: 2
Multiple countries: 9
Unspecified: 5

Only one novel is set in each of the following countries: Kosovo, Bulgaria, Italy, Spain, Nigeria, Russia, Japan, Uganda, and Vietnam.

Genres

This section is problematic, I know, but I decided to add it at the last moment. The problem is that genres are so fluidly described these days that I could have a different list for each book! I tried for broader categories and used a search when I needed to, but sometimes I got as definitive a genre as “novel.” I also realize that short fiction could also fit into one or more of these genres, but I didn’t go there. I didn’t want to deal with specifying more than one genre per book. So, I did my best. Here is the genre breakdown I came up with. I was surprised by how many of the novels were historical, although I know it has recently become a very popular genre.

How Much I Liked Them

I wasn’t sure how to organize this section, so I decided to break it up into categories by how much I enjoyed the book. So, with no more adieu . . . These books are ordered by year of the prize, with the earliest first. For the most part, you will see that the category I put a book in has no relationship to whether it won that year or not. Winners are marked in red.

Books I Loved

Books I Highly Recommend

Books I Moderately Recommend

So-So or Even Meh or Some Good Stuff

Books I Actively Disliked or That Annoyed Me

Best and Worst

The best book choice is tough, but I pick Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. It captured me every second and was minutely researched.

The worst book choice is easy, the only one I didn’t finish, You & Me by Padgett Powell. Who needs to rewrite Waiting for Godot anyway? And so unfunny.

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Published by whatmeread

7 thoughts on “Wrap-Up for My James Tait Black Project”

  1. Such a mammoth undertaking for you! And you do this for multiple prizes?! I think I would have had a very mixed experience of the James Tait Black books, though I do love two of your favorites, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet and The Invisible Bridge.

    I’m ashamed to say I’d never heard of Henrik Pontoppidan.

    Reply

    1. I started with the Walter Scott Historical Fiction Prize because Helen of SheReadsNovels was doing it and it looked fun. Then I thought I’d do Booker Prize, too, and found that although I didn’t like some of the novels, I was reading better books than I usually did. So, when Simon of StuckinaBook mentioned that he thought more people read books from the James Tait Black Prize list, which I had never heard of, I started on that one. But later I decided to switch from James Tait Black to Pulitzer, and now I’m wondering if I shouldn’t have gone for the National Book Award instead.

      Reply

  3. Thanks, I thoroughly enjoyed all your stats! There’s not much I like more than a good pie chart (except maybe chocolate pie)! I have a whole list of questions/comments, you’ll be sad to hear… 😉

    Is that breakdown of ratings pretty average for you? I mean if you did it for every book you read, would threes and fours be the most frequent? I tend to give more fours and fives, but I think that’s because I started reviewing on Amazon, where four is ‘I liked it’ and five is ‘I loved it’ – no quality judgement!

    There’s a surprising number of American authors – what’s the criteria for the prize? Written in English? I see what you mean about reading too much British fiction (I do too!) but I’m actually surprised at the number of ‘foreigners’ in the list. I’m also surprised by the wide range of genres – for some reason I thought James Tait was all historical fiction, but I must be confusing it with the Walter Scott prize, I think.

    I’ve only read a handful of the books – agree about some, disagree about others! I loved Wolf Hall though, so good choice for your winner! White Tears might have been my choice. You’ve also reminded me of Harvest – I loved his writing though I wasn’t wowed by the story, and always meant to read more of him. Have you read anything else by him? And The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is sitting on my wishlist – must shove it up!

    Reply

    1. Golly! I think the ratings might be fairly representative for me. I rarely give anything a one unless it has major things wrong with it, like the person can’t write, and no redeeming features. I also rarely give anything a five unless it provokes a major response, like makes me cry. So, I am treating the higher threes as “liked it okay,” and the fours as “really liked it,” and five as “was swept away by it.” I never actually read the qualifications for the prize, so that would be interesting to find out. Maybe, as you say, written in English, but it’s not a historical fiction prize. I had a hard time with the ratings, though, for the final list. Some things I considered moving up—Harvest was one of them—and others down, but I had to stop moving them around at some point! I did thing White Tears was really good—I think I thought about moving it up, too—and I have a book by him in my pile. I never looked for anything else by Jim Crace, though.

      Reply

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