The Booker and me – an on-going challenge.

As I briefly explained in a recent blog post I do rather love the Booker prize – although I can’t explain why. These days I read far more older novels, than I do contemporary fiction, and yet I still keep a keen eye on the prize – and try to read at least a couple of the long list and shortlist each year. This year I am intending to read all six of the shortlist. Laura recently told me about The Complete Booker and I have decided to become a contributor there too. For a number of years I have been working my way through the list of previous winners – although I have to admit I only decided to do this when I realised I had already read a number of them. Unfortunately most of those were read in the days before I blogged – or later when I wrote tiny piddling little reviews. (All my old reviews were transferred across from livejournal when I decided to move to WordPress at the beginning of the year – but they make pretty poor reading).
So anyway these are the ones I have read so far – it’s a pretty long list now.
2011 The Sense of an Ending – Julian Barnes
2010 The Finkler Question – Howard Jacobson
2009 Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel
2008 The White Tiger – Aravind Adiga
2007 Anne Enright – The Gathering
2006 Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss
2005 – John Banville, The Sea
2004 – Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty
2003 – DBC Pierre, Vernon God Little
2002 – Yann Martel, Life of Pi –
2001 – Peter Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang
2000 – Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
1999 – J M Coetzee, Disgrace
1998 – Ian McEwan, Amsterdam
1997 – Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
1996 – Graham Swift, Last Orders
1995 – Pat Barker, The Ghost Road
1993 – Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
1992 – Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient
1992 – Barry Unsworth, Sacred Hunger
1991 – Ben Okri, The Famished Road
1990 – A S Byatt, Possession
1989 – Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day
1988 – Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda
1987 – Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger
1986 – Kingsley Amis, The Old Devils
1985 – Keri Hulme, The Bone People
1984 – Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac
1983 – J M Coetzee, Life & Times of Michael K
1982 – Thomas Keneally, Schindler’s Ark
1981 – Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children
1979 – Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore
1978 – Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea
1977 – Paul Scott, Staying On

1973 – J G Farrell, The Siege of Krishnapul
1971 – V S Naipaul, In a Free State

Of those I have yet to read – I have three currently resting on my TBR shelves – Nadine Gordimer’s ‘The Conservationist,’ William Golding ‘Rites of Passage’ and Bernice Rubens ‘The Elected Member’. Sometimes I have the feeling I have only those left to read that I’m not sure I want to read – but I have been pleasantly surprised by Booker books before. I put off reading A Life of Pi for years thinking it wasn’t for me – only to find I loved it. I have liked far more of them than I have disliked, although I have to admit to not having liked The Booker of Bookers Midnight’s Children, and I really disliked The Finkler Question, some were tough going like The Siege of Krishnapul and The Sea by John Banville. Others however remain books I will always love; they live in my memory even those I read years ago, ‘The English Patient,’ ‘The Bone People’, ‘Wolf Hall,’ ‘Staying on’, ‘Offshore’ among others. With so few left to read on the list though I have to keep going, hopefully the enthusiasm of other Booker readers will keep me going.