It’s been a busy week, and I’m behind on my reviewing, however, I’m relieved that both of these titles made the shortlist for this year’s Booker Prize, as I’d hoped they would. You can read my previous post on the Riley & Harrison here – and contrary to my expectations, Harrison made the shorlist too. Read More
Category: Booker Prize
Booker Prize 2026 Longlist reading #1 – Riley & Harrison
This year is the first in a few years that I’ve got any excitement up about the Booker Prize, and I’ve now read four titles with a fifth just published (Switzy by Emma Cline) arriving immentently, but I won’t necessarily get that one read before the shortlist announcement on Sept 22. Here are my thoughts Read More
Book Group Report: The Promise by Damon Galgut
This was our pick from the final decade of the Big Jubilee Read, which we’ve worked through decade by decade of her late maj’s reign. In recent years, our book group has steered clear of most of the big prize-winning books–The Promise won the Booker in 2021–but we were all keen to read this one. Read More
11th Blogversary Giveaway – the Result
Thank you so much to everyone who stopped by to leave their best wishes for my blog’s prime 11th birthday. Now to the result of the giveaway. I made a numbered list of everyone making a book choice and generated a random number. The power of serendipity rules sometimes, and number 11 came up – Read More
Heresy? !!!
Back in July, I was collating all things Booker at Shiny. One thing I did was to try to obtain a copy of every single Booker Prize winning novel for photos – I scoured the local charity shops and bought cheap copies online, and of course, I already had a goodly number of them on Read More
Events with Books
Back to normal posting soon – I’ve lots of book reviews to catch up on! But here are the bookish events I’ve been at recently… The Last Chance Hotel Book Launch Firstly – the launch party for friend, former bookseller, and now published author Nicki Thornton, whose book for older children (8-11) The Last Chance Read More
Comedy and the Booker Prize
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle Over at Shiny New Books, it has been ‘Booker Week’ – a decade by decade review of (nearly) all the winning titles and some that missed out on the prize. One of my contributions was to re-read and review Roddy Doyle’s winner – Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Read More
Shiny Booker Week
We’re celebrating The Man Booker Prize at Shiny New Books this week, as the prize gears up to its 50th year with the Golden Booker being announced at the weekend (I’m going to the prize ceremony in London). I do urge you to take a look – as each day we’re celebrating a different decade Read More
The 1980 Booker Prize winner…
Rites of Passage by William Golding Golding’s book divided the Booker judges initially, as it was the first part of a planned trilogy, (the other two volumes were published several years later). Could the prize be given to a part work? Of course it could – and that has happened several times since in Booker Read More
1974 joint Booker Prize winner…
Holiday by Stanley Middleton Some time ago, I picked up a copy of Holiday at a book sale, only knowing that it had shared the 1974 Booker prize with Nadine Gordimer’s The Conservationist. I’d otherwise never heard of Middleton, so I was surprised to find this was the 14th novel of his 44-novel career! If Read More
