The Siege of Krishnapur by J. G. Farrell -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

The Siege of Krishnapur by J. G. Farrell 

Thank you for joining me for Book Beginnings on Fridays. Please share the opening sentence (or so) of the book you are reading this week. You can also share from a book that caught your fancy, even if you are not reading it right now.

MY BOOK BEGINNING

Anyone who has never before visited Krishnapur, and who approaches from the east, is likely to think he has reached the end of his journey a few miles sooner than he expected.

-- from The Siege of Krishnapur by J. G. Farrell.

Farrell won the 1973 Booker Prize for The Siege of Krishnapur, a novel based on historical events. In telling the tale of one of the battles during India's 1857 Great Mutiny, Farrell critiques colonialism and examines the beginning of the end of the British Empire. 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

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THE FRIDAY 56

The Friday 56 is a natural tie-in with Book Beginnings. The idea is to share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of your featured book. If you are reading an ebook or audiobook, find your teaser from the 56% mark.

Freda at Freda's Voice started and hosted The Friday 56 for a long, long time. She is taking a break and Anne at My Head is Full of Books has taken on hosting duties in her absence. Please visit Anne's blog and link to your Friday 56 post.

MY FRIDAY 56

-- from The Siege of Krishnapur:

Yet it was the Collector himself who was responsible for this fortnightly torment since it was he who had founded the Society. He had done so partly because he was a believer in the ennobling powers of literature, and partly because he was sorry for the ladies of the Cantonment who had, particularly during the hot season, so little to occupy them.

FROM THE PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

India, 1857--the year of the Great Mutiny, when Muslim soldiers turned in bloody rebellion on their British overlords. This time of convulsion is the subject of J. G. Farrell's The Siege of Krishnapur, widely considered one of the finest British novels of the last fifty years.

Farrell's story is set in an isolated Victorian outpost on the subcontinent. Rumors of strife filter in from afar, and yet the members of the colonial community remain confident of their military and, above all, moral superiority. But when they find themselves under actual siege, the true character of their dominion--at once brutal, blundering, and wistful--is soon revealed.

My Sign Up Post -- TBR 25 IN '25 & MT. TBR CHALLENGES

 

THE TBR 25 IN '25 CHALLENGE

THE MT. TBR CHALLENGE

My Sign Up Post

This is my sign up post for the TBR 25 in '25 and Mt. TBR Challenges. If you want to join me in the TBR 25 in '25 Challenge (and I hope you do), go to the main challenge page, here. Bev at My Reader's Block hosts the Mt. TBR Challenge. You can find the details for that one here. 

The number of unread books on my shelves is staggering. I long ago stopped referring to "my TBR shelf" because there are many shelves of unread books in my house. I prefer to think to it as a "library" and may never get to all of them. But I mean to try. 

Last year, I read the 24 books I picked for the TBR 24 in '24 Challenge, plus another 70 books for the Mt. TBR Challenge, for a total of 94 books read from my TBR library. I hope to reach at least 100 this year. 

You do not have to pick your TBR 25 in '25 book ahead of time. You can. Or you can pick them as you go. Or you can pick and then change your mind. The only "rule" is that the books have to have been on your shelf before January 1, 2025. 

Here are my TBR 25 in '25 picks, in alphabetical order by author. I'll read them in any old order:

• One Man’s San Francisco by Herb Cain

• French Provincial Cooking by Elizabeth David

• The Siege of Krishnapur by J. G. Farrell FINISHED

• Daphne du Maurier: The Secret Life of the Renowned Storyteller by Margaret Forster NOW

• Biter Orange by Claire Fuller

• Careless in Red by Elizabeth George

• Q.’s Legacy by Helene Hanff

• Ripley Under Ground by Patricia Highsmith

• Ripley’s Game by Patricia Highsmith

• Absolute Truths by Susan Howatch FINISHED

• Beat Not the Bones by Charlotte Jay

• The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis

• The Widow on Dwyer Court by Lisa Kusel

• The Lady of the Mine by Sergei Lebedev

• Lost & Found: Public Theology in the Secular Age by Michael A. Milton NOW

• Kingmaker: Pamela Harriman's Astonishing Life of Power, Seduction, and Intrigue by Sonia Purnell

• Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table by Ruth Reichl

• Dragon’s Teeth by Upton Sinclair FINISHED

• The Kitchen Diaries: A Year in the Kitchen by Nigel Slater NOW

• The Maine Woods by Henry David Thoreau

• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

• A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table by Molly Wizenberg

• Zabar's: A Family Story, with Recipes by Lori Zabar

There was no rhyme or rhythm to how I picked these. A few, like the Herb Cain book, have languished on my shelves for too long. Others came to me more recently, but with the understanding that I would read them right away, which I haven't. Some are for group reads on Instagram, like Imitation of Christ and the du Maurier biography. A few won prizes and I'm trying to read all the winners, like the Charlotte Jay book that won the very first Edgar Award for best mystery in 1954.

I got this post up so late that I've already read several of these. I wanted to start strong in January so I have momentum to read these and then move on to my Mt. TBR books. 

I don't know which books I'll read for that one yet. But I signed up for the Mt. Everest level to read a total of 100 books off my shelves. That means I need 75 in addition tot he 25 listed above. I'm ready to climb!

 

Books I read in July -- MONTHLY WRAP UP

MONTHLY WRAP UP

July 2023

I finished 13 books in July, including three from my TBR 23 in '23 stack. There wasn’t a clunker in the bunch.

 
See any of your own favorites here? 

PICTURED

French Ways and Their Meaning by Edith Wharton, a collection of WWI-era essays aimed at teaching American soldiers about France. One of my TBR 23 in '23 books. 🌹🌹🌹🌹

The Painted Veil by Somerset Maugham. This is an August buddy read, but I jumped the gun. As usual, I enjoyed the book much more than the movie, which I watched when it came out in 2006. 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu, which I loved. Yu won the 2020 National Book Award for this funny, insightful satire of Hollywood. 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

A Passionate Man by Joanne Trollope. I love a good Aga Saga and Trollope always delivers. 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

Italian Fever by Valerie Martin is the story of a woman who goes to Italy when the novelist she works for dies there and she needs to wrap up his affairs. The details were more than a bit odd, but it kept me interested. 🌹🌹🌹1/2

The Sellout by Paul Beatty won the 2020 Booker Prize. It was a little scattered and magical for me, but I appreciate the talent it took to create it. 🌹🌹🌹🌹

S. by John Updike is a 1988 novel inspired by the Rajneeshees here in Oregon. It sagged for me some in the middle, but had a couple of twists that perked up the ending. All in all, a highlight of the month. It will stick with me. 🌹🌹🌹🌹

Foxed Quarterly Vol. 77, the Spring 2023 issue. I keep track of when I finish these so I know which ones I’ve read. 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

Bobos in Paradise by David Brooks, because I always seem to be about 20 years behind with popular sociology books. 🌹🌹🌹🌹

Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh, a buddy read over on Instagram. So good! 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner by Elizabeth George, another in her Inspector Lynley series I’m marching through. 🌹🌹🌹🌹

A Better Man by Louise Penny. I enjoyed this one as much as always and now only have three left! 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

NOT PICTURED

Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson, which I read with my ears. What a fantastic book! This shaggy novel set in 1920s London was the perfect companion to Vile Bodies, almost an homage. Another favorite. 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

What were your standout reads in July?

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Happy Independence Day weekend to my Friends in the USA! I hope you have a wonderful 4th of July celebration lined up.

It looks like things are going to be pretty low-key around our place. I went on my first work trip since before the pandemic last weekend and came home with covid. Just like that! I thought I might be one of the few people to escape getting it, but no luck. I've been home from work all week, although more to quarantine myself because my symptoms are mild. Now Hubby has it and he is quite cranky with me!

I hope you take the time from your holiday (or not) weekend to share the first sentence (or so) of the books you are reading with all of us here on Book Beginnings on Fridays. You can also share from a book that caught your fancy this week even if you are not reading it right now.

MY BOOK BEGINNING

The twelve men congregated in the smoking room of the Crown Hotel gave the impression of a party accidentally met. 

-- from Part One, "A Sphere within a Sphere," The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton.

Catton won the 2013 Booker Prize for this chunkster of a historical novel, set in the 1860s goldrush in New Zealand, packed with opium, fortune tellers, whores, tricksters, and lovers. I just finished it today and really liked it even if I didn't completely love it. The style and tone are pitch perfect and the story is enthralling. But it gets caught in occasional swirling eddies where the story spins around but doesn't move forward. And a lot of very complicated questions get only obliquely answered in the final chapter, and only in the subtitle, which is pretty cheeky.  

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please leave the link to your Book Beginnings post in the box below. If you share on social media, please use the hashtag #bookbeginnings.

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THE FRIDAY 56

The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice is a natural tie in with this event and there is a lot of cross over, so many people combine the two. The idea is to post a teaser from page 56 of the book you are reading and share a link to your post. Find details and the Linky for your Friday 56 post on Freda’s Voice.

MY FRIDAY 56

From The Luminaries:

Thrice already that morning the politician had protested the introduction of a new theme, returning always to his imperious patter about ships. Every time Balfour began to speak of local news, the politician declared himself sick to death of useless brooding about the hermit and the whore — when in fact, Balfour thought with annoyance, they hadn't discussed either event in any real detail, and certainly not from all corners and all sides.

The Booker Prize -- LIST

THE BOOKER PRIZE

The Booker Prize is awarded each year for a full-length novel, written English and published in the UK. The Booker was traditionally awarded for novels by British, Irish, and Commonwealth authors published in the UK. In 2014, the award was opened to any novel originally written in English, mostly meaning Americans became eligible. The winner is awarded £50,000. The winner and the shortlisted authors see a significant increase in sales.

The Booker winners is one of my favorite books lists. That said, I am not going to keep updating the winners after 2021. My enthusiasm for prize-winners is waning with the 2020s. I plan to focus my efforts on reading the winners up to 2020 then declare victory and move on to other bookish projects.

If anyone else working on this list would like me to post a link to reviews or your progress report(s), please leave a comment with a link and I will add it below.

So far, I have read 46 of the winners. Here is the list, with notes about whether I've finished a book or if it is on my TBR shelf:

2021: Damon Galgut: The Promise

2020: Douglas Stuart, Shuggie Bain FINISHED

2019: Margaret Atwood, The Testaments ON OVERDRIVE; Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other ON OVERDRIVE

2018: Anna Burns, Milkman FINISHED

2017: George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo FINISHED

2016: Paul Beatty, The Sellout FINISHED

2015: Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings FINISHED

2014: Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North FINISHED

2013: Elinor Catton, The Luminaries FINISHED

2012: Hilary Mantel, Bring up the Bodies FINISHED

2011: Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending (reviewed here) FINISHED

2010: Howard Jacobson, The Finkler Question (reviewed here) FINISHED

2009: Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall (reviewed here) FINISHED

2008: Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger FINISHED

2007: Anne Enright, The Gathering (reviewed here) FINISHED

2006: Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss FINISHED

2005: John Banville, The Sea (reviewed here) FINISHED

2004: Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty TBR SHELF

2003: DBC Pierre, Vernon God Little FINISHED

2002: Yann Martel, Life of Pi FINISHED

2001: Peter Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang FINISHED
 
2000: Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin FINISHED

1999: J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace FINISHED

1998: Ian McEwan, Amsterdam FINISHED (twice)

1997: Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things FINISHED

1996: Graham Swift, Last Orders FINISHED

1995: Pat Barker, The Ghost Road TBR SHELF

1994: James Kelman, How Late it Was, How Late TBR SHELF

1993: Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha FINISHED

1992: Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient TBR SHELF, and Barry Unsworth, Sacred Hunger (reviewed here) FINISHED

1991: Ben Okri, The Famished Road

1990: A.S. Byatt, Possession FINISHED

1989: Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day FINISHED

1988: Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda (reviewed here) FINISHED

1987: Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger FINISHED

1986: Kingsley Amis, The Old Devils FINISHED

1985: Keri Hulme, The Bone People (reviewed here) FINISHED

1984: Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac FINISHED (twice)

1983: J. M. Coetzee, The Life and Times of Michael K (reviewed here) FINISHED

1982: Thomas Keneally, Schindler's List FINISHED

1981: Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children (reviewed here) FINISHED 

1980: William Golding, Rites of Passage FINISHED

1979: Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore FINISHED

1978: Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea (reviewed here) FINISHED

1977: Paul Scott, Staying On FINISHED

1976: David Storey, Saville TBR SHELF

1975: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust FINISHED

1974: Nadine Gordimer, The Conservationist FINISHED, and Stanley Middleton, Holiday FINISHED

1973: J. G. Farrell, The Siege of Krishnapur TBR SHELF

1972: John Berger, G (reviewed here) FINISHED

1971: V.S. Naipaul, In a Free State FINISHED

1970, The Lost Booker: J. G. Farrell, Troubles TBR SHELF

1970: Bernice Rubens, The Elected Member TBR SHELF

1969: Percy Howard Newby, Something to Answer For FINISHED


NOTES

Updated July 3, 2025. This is a redo of the Booker list I originally created in 2014. 

OTHERS READING BOOKER WINNERS

The Complete Booker: This group blog is no longer actively administered, but there is a treasure trove of Booker-related material.

If you would like to be listed, please leave a comment with links to your progress reports or reviews and I will add them here.

Book Beginning: Staying On by Paul Scott

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS
THANKS FOR JOINING ME ON FRIDAYS FOR BOOK BEGINNING FUN!

MY BOOK BEGINNING

When Tusker Smalley died of a massive coronary at approximately 9:30 am on the last Monday in April, 1972, his wife Lucy was out, having her white hair blue-rinsed and set at the Seraglio Room on the ground floor of Pankot's new five-storey glass and concrete hotel, the Shiraz.

UPDATE, Saturday, March 9, 2019: 

Apparently I was so distracted when I put this post up that I didn't realize I left out the name of my book and any description. It's been that kind of week.

-- Staying On by Paul Scott is a sequel to Scott's Raj Quartet about the wind up of British rule in India during WWII. He won the 1977 Booker Prize for Staying On.

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author’s name.

EARLY BIRDS & SLOWPOKES: This weekly post goes up Thursday evening for those who like to get their posts up and linked early on. But feel free to add a link all week.

SOCIAL MEDIA: If you are on Twitter, Instagram, or other social media, please post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I try to follow all Book Beginnings participants on whatever interweb sites you are on, so please let me know if I have missed any and I will catch up.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING





TIE IN: The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice is a natural tie in with this event and there is a lot of cross over, so many people combine the two. The idea is to post a teaser from page 56 of the book you are reading and share a link to your post. Find details and the Linky for your Friday 56 post on Freda’s Voice.

MY FRIDAY 56

My Friday 56 is missing this week. I don't have the book with me and I am still at the office after 8:00 pm -- something I almost never do. I have a brief to file in a case in Idaho tomorrow and a court hearing here in Portland, so I barely got my opening sentence up. Next week!

Mailbox Monday: Stanley Middleton

A matching vintage set of Stanley Middleton books came my way. What books came into your house last week?

Changes and Chances

Valley of Decision

Entry into Jerusalem

Stanley Middleton won the 1974 Booker Prize for Holiday and wrote a total of 44 novels. I found these three on the Friends of the Library sale shelf when I was in Missoula for work.

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday, a weekly "show & tell" blog event where participants share the books they acquired the week before. Visit the Mailbox Monday website to find links to all the participants' posts and read more about Books that Caught our Eye.

Mailbox Monday is graciously hosted by Leslie of Under My Apple Tree, Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit, and Vicki of I'd Rather Be at the Beach.

Mailbox Monday: Britannia Edition

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring event. Mailbox Monday has now returned to its permanent home where you can link to your MM post.

I've been on a Brexit inspired book buying spree and have a mountain of used books to show for it. With the exception of the P.D. James mystery from this century, all the books were published in the middle of the last, mostly in the 1950s and '60s.

Starting with the most recently published and working backwards:



The Lighthouse by P.D. James, her 13th Adam Dalgliesh mystery (2005)



Henry and Cato by Iris Murdoch (1976)



The Moon's a Balloon and Bring on the Empty Horses, two volumes of his autobiography reprinted together (1972; 1975)



The Elected Member by Bernice Rubens, which won the Booker Prize (1969)



The Nice and the Good by Iris Murdoch (1968)



The Italian Girl by Iris Murdoch (1964)



The Unicorn by Iris Murdoch (1963)



The Old Men at the Zoo by Andgus Wilson, which is on Anthony Burgess's list of his favorite 99 novels (1961)



The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay (1956)



Anglo-Saxon Attitudes by Angus Wilson (1956)



Such Darling Dodos, short stories by Angus Wilson (1950)



England, Their England by A.G. Macdonell (1933)



Lady into Fox by David Garnett, which won the James Tait Black Prize (1922)

TBT: Review: The Bone People by Keri Hulme

Throw Back Thursday

This review of The Bone People, the 1985 Booker Prize winner by Keri Hulme, was first posted on October 4, 2008.

The Bone People by Keri Hulme is a difficult book about identity, love, and belonging. Hulme tells the story of three tough-as-nails characters: Kerewin, an isolated artist who can no longer paint; Joe, a Maori workman struggling to raise his adopted son alone; and Simon, the mute little boy Joe found washed up on the seashore.

The style is difficult because the point of view switches around among the three main characters without warning; Hulme uses Joycean made-up words as well as Maori words; and it is hard to tell when the adults are speaking their own words or thinking out loud what they think the mute little Simon is trying to communicate.

The story is difficult because of the child abuse at the center of the plot. The ambivalence with which Hulme treats the topic makes the story incredibly interesting, but absolutely distressing.

The characters are difficult because none of them are likable. Simon is sympathetic, for sure. But even he has his moments of maliciousness, although these are less convincing than Hulme may have intended. Joe, on the other hand, does not deserve the sympathy Hulme seems to want the reader to give him. Yes, he gets his comeuppance in the end, but it does not seem sufficient punishment. His role is key to the story because he is the hinge between Simon and Kerewin, but the ultimate resolution seems a little unrealistic, given the prior conflict.

Kerwin is particularly prickly and seething with anger. She is quick to lash out verbally, and if angry enough or drunk enough, physically. She has cut herself off from her family and her community, preferring to live in an isolated tower by the ocean. She has even isolated herself from her own sex, considering herself to be a third gender – a “neuter.” But Kerwin’s story makes the book worth reading. She is one of the most complex and intriguing characters in contemporary literature.

Storyline Serendipity: The National Gallery in London

NATIONAL GALLERY SERENDIPITY

IN TWO NOVELS I RECENTLY READ

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (2000; Booker Prize winner)
The Bell by Iris Murdoch (1958; her fourth novel)

Both these novels have sat on my TBR shelf for years and only by happenstance did I read them at the same time this month -- when I took a break from the hardback Atwood chunkster to read the short and lively Murdoch on a plane trip.

I was struck by the serendipity that the heroines in both books visit the National Gallery in London alone, and that these visits are turning points in their personal development.

This coincidence made me realize that, although the stories are completely different, the heroines are cut from the same pattern. Both Dora in The Bell and Iris in The Blind Assassin are beautiful girls lacking formal education, with no ideas of how to support themselves as adults, so end up married too young to men too old for them. Their narcissistic husbands want to mold their new brides to their images of ideal wives, regardless of the women's own interests and desires.

In The Bell, Dora's visit to National Gallery is a break from ping ponging between her husband and her lover and the moment she starts to think for herself.

In The Blind Assassin, Iris spends most of her London honeymoon, while her husband is in business meetings, on sightseeing tours of monuments he arranged for her. Her visit to the National Gallery is her first act of independence and marital rebellion.

Iris's story is much longer and more complex than Dora's. But I wonder if Margaret Atwood read Iris Murdoch's book and it planted a seed?

WHAT IS STORYLINE SERENDIPITY?

A ONCE-IN-A-WHILE BLOG EVENT

Have you had the experience of something coming up in a book -- an event, place, idea, historical character, or even an unusual word -- and then shortly after, the same thing comes up in a different book completely by coincidence? I call this Storyline Serendipity.

I don't mean like when you take a class in Russian history and read two books about the Tsar. Or when you read two mysteries and there are dead bodies in each.

I mean random coincidence between two books. I like it when this happens because it makes me slow down and pay more attention to how the event or idea, place or character was treated in each book. I get a little more out of each book than I would have if the universe hadn't paired them on my reading list.

If you experience Storyline Serendipity, feel free to grab the button and play along. If you want to, please leave the link to your post in a comment. Or leave the link to your post on the Rose City Reader facebook page. If you want to participate but don't have a blog or don't feel like posting, please share your serendipity in a comment.

This is a once-in-a-while blog event that I'll post as I come across Storyline Serendipity. If you want to participate, post whenever you want and leave a comment back here on my latest Storyline Serendipity post. If it ever catches on, we can make it a monthly event.

Teaser Tuesday: The Blind Assassin

When the policeman had gone I went upstairs to change. To visit the morgue I would need gloves, and a hat with a veil.

-- The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood.

This Booker Prize winner has been on my TBR shelf forever! I was intimidated by the idea of its novel within a novel within a novel, but I shouldn't have been. The structure is not as complicated as it sounds. The narrator Iris is telling the story of her and her sister Laura's lives. But the book also includes an apparently autobiographical novel of Laura's, published posthumously, that fills in Iris's story. And part of Laura's novel is an allegorical science fiction story told by the lover to the novel's heroine. So all three works of fiction combine to tell one story.

OK, so maybe it does sound complicated. But it doesn't feel complicated when you read it. It comes out just as a really good story.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by MizB at Books and a Beat, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Mailbox Monday

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring event. Mailbox Monday has now returned to its permanent home where you can link to your MM post.

A mixed trio of books came into my house last week:



The Lemon Cookbook: 50 Sweet & Savory Recipes to Brighten Every Meal by Ellen Jackson, published by Sasquatch Books. The bright sunny cover is irresistible!



The Anger Meridian by Kaylie Jones, published by Akashic Books, creator of the popular city-themed Noir Series. This looks like a murder mystery Mommy Dearest mashup.



The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan. I snagged this 2014 Booker Prize winner from a Little Free Library!

List: The Booker Prize

The Booker Prize is awarded each year for a full-length novel, written English and published in the UK. The Booker was traditionally awarded for novels by British, Irish, and Commonwealth authors published in the UK. In 2014, the award was opened to any novel originally written in English, mostly meaning Americans became eligible.

The winner is awarded £50,000. The winner and the shortlisted authors see a significant increase in sales.

If anyone else working on this list would like me to post a link to reviews or your progress report(s), please leave a comment with a link and I will add it below.

So far, I have read 35 of the 52 winners.  Here is the list, with those I have finished reading in red; those on my TBR shelf in blue:

2018: Anna Burns, Milkman

2017: George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo

2016: Paul Beatty, The Sellout

2015: Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings

2014: Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North

2013: Elinor Catton, The Luminaries

2012: Hilary Mantel, Bring up the Bodies

2011: Julian Barnes, The Sense Of an Ending (reviewed here)

2010: Howard Jacobson, The Finkler Question (reviewed here)

2009: Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall (reviewed here)

2008: Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger

2007: Anne Enright, The Gathering (reviewed here)

2006: Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

2005: John Banville, The Sea (reviewed here)

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

1994: James Kelman, How Late it Was, How Late

1993: Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

1992: Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient, and Barry Unsworth, Sacred Hunger (reviewed here)

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 (reviewed here)

1987: Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger

1986: Kingsley Amis, The Old Devils

1985: Keri Hulme, The Bone People (reviewed here)

1984: Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac

1983: J. M. Coetzee, The Life and Times of Michael K (reviewed here)

1982: Thomas Keneally, Schindler's List

1981: Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children (reviewed here)

1980: William Golding, Rites of Passage

1979: Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore

1978: Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea (reviewed here)

1977: Paul Scott, Staying On

1976: David Storey, Saville

1975: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust

1974: Nadine Gordimer, The Conservationist, and Stanley Middleton, Holiday

1973: J. G. Farrell, The Siege of Krishnapur

1972: John Berger, G (reviewed here)

1971: V.S. Naipaul, In a Free State

1970, The Lost Booker: J. G. Farrell, Troubles

1970: Bernice Rubens, The Elected Member

1969: Percy Howard Newby, Something to Answer For


NOTE

Last updated on December 31, 2018.

OTHERS READING BOOKER WINNERS

The Complete Booker (a group blog)
Farm Lane Books
Fresh Ink Books
Hotch Pot Cafe

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Booker Prize: 2014 Winner

The 2014 Booker Prize went to Richard Flanagan for The Narrow Road to the Deep North, a “magnificent novel of love and war” that tells the agonizing story of prisoners and captors on the Burma railway in WWII.

This is the first year the prize was opened up to Americans. The Booker has traditionally been awarded for novels by British, Irish, and Commonwealth authors published in the UK.  Then they added a biennial "international" prize for any book written in English.  That one would cover American authors and seems enough to me.  I really don't like that they opened the regular Booker prize to Americans. We already have the Pulitzer and the National, we don't need to horn in on Britain's big prize.

But I guess it's not an issue this year, since the prize went to an Australian author.

Five Faves: Big Yarns

FIVE FAVE BIG YARNS

Summer is a great time to fall into a "Big Yarn" kind of book, which I define as an absorbing story with a strong, coherent plot, fully-developed characters, drama, a reasonable tempo, and at least a few thought-provoking ideas. To me, Big Yarns offer more plot then philosophy and don't get experimental with structure or language.

My general definition excludes genre novels, like thrillers, which can be absorbing page-turners, but (with exceptions) tend to lack fully-developed characters and thought-provoking ideas. I also think of books that appeal to readers of both sexes and most ages. In my mind, The Count of Monte Cristo is the grand daddy of all Big Yarns. Most Dickens books and many other 19th Century novels also qualify.

What are some of your favorite Big Yarns? A short list of my favorites include:

• Brazzaville Beach by William Boyd (reviewed here)

• What's Bred in the Bone by Robertson Davies (reviewed here)

• The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney (reviewed here)

• Empire Falls by Richard Russo (reviewed here)

• Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth (reviewed here)

In making this list, I realized just how much I enjoy Big Yarns, because I reviewed all of them.

FIVE FAVES

There are times when a full-sized book list is just too much; when the Top 100, a Big Read, or all the Prize winners seem like too daunting an effort. That's when a short little list of books grouped by theme may be just the ticket.

Inspired by Nancy Pearl's "Companion Reads" chapter in Book Lust – themed clusters of books on subjects as diverse as Bigfoot and Vietnam – I decided to start occasionally posting lists of five books grouped by topic or theme. I call these posts my Five Faves.

Feel free to grab the button and play along. Use today's theme or come up with your own. If you post about it, please link back to here and leave the link to your post in a comment. If you want to participate but don't have a blog or don't feel like posting, please share your list in a comment.

Review: The Gathering by Anne Enright

It is comforting to think of memory as a recording of past events that can be played back anytime. But the brain does not store memories – especially traumatic memories – in such an orderly and retrievable fashion. In The Gathering, Anne Enright grapples with the chaotic, fragmented, and twisted ways we remember the traumas of childhood.

The memories belong to Veronica, one of the nine surviving Hegarty siblings, gathered for the funeral of their brother Liam. Veronica tries to deal with her grief and make sense of her brother's death by piecing together their family history. She uses her imagination and objective clues to give context to distressing images from the time she and Liam lived with their grandmother.

Veronica's struggle is authentically idiosyncratic. Her grief and the secrets she carries drive some kooky behavior and alienate her from her husband, her mother, and her own daughters. She can be an unattractive, if believable, heroine.

Veronica's off-putting conduct and Enright's sometimes too-obtuse prose makes The Gathering a difficult book. But Enright earned her Booker prize for tackling a harrowing subject and concluding with the important lesson that a problem cannot be solved until it is acknowledged.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it. 

NOTES

The Gathering is one of the books I read for the MT. TBR CHALLENGE (hosted by Bev on My Reader's Block) and the OFF THE SHELF CHALLENGE (hosted by Bonnie on Bookish Ardour).

Mailbox Monday

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring event (details here).

One of my favorite bloggers, Caitlin from Chaotic Compendiums, is hosting in March. Stop by her terrific blog! You'll be glad you did and, as promised, you may just find your next book.

I got one book last week:






Staying On by Paul Scott. This novel, described as a coda to his better-known Raj Quartet, is the story of two British colonials who stay on in India after the country's independence.  Scott won the 1977 Booker Prize for this tangentially related but stand-alone book.

Review: The Sense of an Ending

Julian Barnes explores memory, loss, and lives built around the empty spaces in his Booker-winning novel, The Sense of an Ending. Ostensibly the reminiscence of the recently retired and contentedly divorced Tony Webster, the story deepens to tragedy when Tony reconnects with his college girlfriend and re-examines what he thinks he remembers about his past.

As Tony bit-by-bit abandons his understanding of passed events, he gives up the assumption that “memory equals events plus time” and realizes that “time doesn't act as a fixative, rather as a solvent.”

This scrutiny of memory makes the novel reverberate. Because I try cases on behalf of adults who were abused when they were children, I deal daily with imperfect memories, forgotten details, and re-created stories as my clients and the people we sue patch together their history. I’ve learned that truth – or as close as we can get – is three-dimensional and can be built only collaboratively.

Or, as Tony muses:

[A]s the witnesses to your life diminish, there is less corroboration, and therefore less certainty, as to what you are or have been. Even if you have assiduously kept records – in words, sound, pictures – you may find that you have attended to the wrong kind of record-keeping. What was the line Adrian used to quote? “History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.”

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

The Sense of an Ending deservedly won the 2011 Booker Prize.