why?
Because I have read a couple and they were cool, so i thought I should read them all. Even the wanky ones.
My review and score out of ten for teh books will appear as I read each one.
the list is:
1969: P.H. Newby - Something to Answer For
1970: Bernice Rubens - The Elected Member
1971: V.S. Naipaul - In a Free State
1972: John Berger - G
1973: J.G. Farrell - Siege of Krishnapur
1974: Stanley Middleton - Holiday and Nadine Gordimer The Conservationist
1975: Ruth Prower - Jhabvala Heat and Dust
1976: David Storey - Saville
1977: Paul Scott - Staying On
1978: Iris Murdoch - The Sea, The Sea
1979: Penelope Fitzgerald - Offshore
1980: William Golding - Rites of Passage
1981: Salman Rushdie - Midnight's Children
1982: Thomas Keneally - Schindler's Ark
1983: J.M. Coetzee - Life and Times of Michael K.
1984: Anita Brookner - Hotel Du Lac
1985: Keri Hulme - Bone People
1986: Kingsley Amis - The Old Devils
1987: Penelope Lively - Moon Tiger
1988: Peter Carey - Oscar and Lucinda
1989: Kazuo Ishiguro - The Remains of the Day
1990: A.S. Byatt - Possession
1991: Ben Okri - The Famished Road
1992: Michael Ondaatje T- he English Patient and Barry Unsworth - Sacred Hunger
1993: Roddy Doyle - Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
1994: James Kelman - How Late It Was, How Late
1995: Pat Barker - The Ghost Road
1996: Graham Swift - Last Orders
1997: Arundhati Roy - The God of Small Things
1998: Ian McEwan - Amsterdam
1999: J.M. Coetzee - Disgrace
2000: Margaret Atwood - The Blind Assassin
2001: Peter Carey - True History of the Kelly Gang
2002: Yann Martel - Life of Pi
2003: DBC Pierre (Peter Warren Finlay) - Vernon God Little
2004: Alan Hollinghurst - The Line of Beauty
2005: John Banville - The Seadone?
1 September 2006
I figured I should really get going with this and decided that maybe chronological order would be the best way to start. So I happily surfed on to amazon.co.uk and searched for P.H.Newby's 'Something to Answer For', the very first Booker Prize Winner from 1969.
Upon punching the name of the book in search engine I am faced with this:
550 quid! For a book! Not a widescreen telly, or a new guitar... a book! Turns out that this has been out of print for quite a while and rather difficult to get hold of, hence the price.
A bit of surfing and I managed to track down a second hand book seller in Virginia, USA, who had a copy for $100. Described as 'well read and a bit tattered' the book also has a library stamp and a couple of tears. I e-mailed the shop in question with a deal in mind, offering $50 for the book including postage. A couple of bartering e-mails later and we struck a deal of $60 including postage. And here is the little beauty:
Might auction it on ebay afterwards and see if I can make a profit. Hope it isn't crap.
