Krishna from S.Krishna’s Books, and Nidhi and Veens over at Giving…Reading a Chance have compiled a nice list of Booker award winners and nominees of the past 20 years. This being Booker season, and somewhat in continuation of my earlier post, I am happily including their list here crossing off the books I have read. The books in bold are the Man Booker winners.

So, without further ado, here is the list:

Best of the Booker:

• Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie – Finally crossed this off my list. Here’s my review.
• The Siege of Krishnapur – J.G. Farrell
• The Conservationist – Nadine Gordimer
• Oscar and Lucinda – Peter Carey
• The Ghost Road – Pat Barker
• Disgrace – J.M. Coetzee

2012:

• The Garden of Evening Mists – Tan Twan Eng
• Swimming Home – Deborah Levy
• Bring up the Bodies – Hilary Mantel
• The Lighthouse – Alison Moore
• Umbrella – Will Self
• Narcopolis – Jeet Thayil

2011:

• The Sense of an Ending – Julian Barnes Enjoyable book with some lovely writing. My review here.
• Jamrach’s Menagerie – Carol Birch
• The Sisters Brothers – Patrick deWitt
• Half Blood Blues – Esi Edugyan
• Pigeon English – Stephen Kelman
• Snowdrops – A.D. Miller

2010:

• Parrot and Olivier in America – Peter Carey
• Room – Emma Donoghue
• In a Strange Room – Damon Galgut
• The Finkler Question – Howard Jacobson
• The Long Song – Andrea Levy
• C – Tom McCarthy

2009:

• Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel
• Summertime – J.M. Coetzee
• The Quickening Maze – Adam Foulds
• The Children’s Book – A.S. Byatt
• The Glass Room – Simon Mawer
• The Little Stranger – Sarah Waters

2008:

• The White Tiger – Aravind Adiga Nice powerful novel, one of the few Man Booker award winners I whole-heartedly enjoyed. My review is here
• The Secret Scripture – Sebastian Barry
• Sea of Poppies – Amitav Ghosh
• The Clothes on Their Backs – Linda Grant
• The Northern Clemency – Philip Hensher
• A Fraction of the Whole – Steve Toltz

2007:

• The Gathering – Anne Enright Very dark and depressing. A novel about alcoholism, child abuse, and suicide. Not for the easily depressed. Lovely writing though!
• Darkmans – Nicola Barker
• The Reluctant Fundamentalist – Mohsin Hamid
• Mister Pip – Lloyd Jones
• On Chesil Beach – Ian McEwan Lovely little gem of a book. Ignore the so-so reviews on the web and read it yourself. You just might like it. I know I loved it. My review here
• Animal’s People – Indra Sinha

2006:

• The Inheritance of Loss – Kiran Desai Nice moving story with a lot of depth, beautiful descriptions, made me want to move to the Himalayas.
• The Secret River – Kate Grenville
• Carry Me Down – M.J. Hyland
• In the Country of Men – Hisham Matar
• Mother’s Milk – Edward St. Aubyn
• The Night Watch – Sarah Waters

2005:

• The Sea – John Banville
• Arthur and George – Julian Barnes
• A Long, Long Way – Sebastian Barry
• Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro One of my faves. I was bawling like a baby by the time I finished this book.
• On Beauty – Zadie Smith Comme ci, comme ca…nothing exceptional, but not boring either.
• The Accidental – Ali Smith

2004:

• The Line of Beauty – Alan Hollinghurst
• Bitter Fruit – Achmat Dangor
• The Electric Michelangelo – Sarah Faber
• Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
• The Master – Colm Toibin
• I’ll Go To Bed At Noon – Gerard Woodward

2003:

• Vernon God Little – DBC Pierre
• Brick Lane – Monica Ali
• Oryx and Crake – Margaret Atwood
• The Good Doctor – Damon Galgut
• Notes on a Scandal – Zoe Heller
• Astonishing Splashes of Color – Claire Morrall

2002:

• Life of Pi – Yann Martel Overhyped novel, but still a really fun read with a surprising ending that makes you reflect a bit. I think everyone who reads this novel has a different take on it.
• Family Matters – Rohinton Mistry
• Unless – Carol Shields
• The Story of Lucy Gault – William Trevor
• Fingersmith – Sarah Waters
• Dirt Music – Tom Winton

2001:

• True History of the Kelly Gang – Peter Carey
• Atonement – Ian McEwan Crossed this off my list last year. See my review here
• Oxygen – Andrew Miller
• number9dream – David Mitchell
• The Dark Room – Rachel Seiffert
• Hotel World – Ali Smith

2000:

• The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood This is one book I just didn’t get. I managed to complete it, but could just never put it together in my mind. To be honest, I didn’t care enough to even try.
• The Hiding Place – Trezza Azzopardi
• The Keepers of the Truth – Michael Collins
• When We Were Orphans – Kazuo Ishiguro
• English Passengers – Matthew Kneale
• The Deposition of Father McGreevy – Brian O’Doherty

1999:

• Disgrace – J.M. Coetzee
• Fasting, Feasting – Anita Desai
• Headlong – Michael Frayn
• The Map of Love – Ahdaf Soueif
• The Blackwater Lightship – Colm Toibin
• Our Fathers – Andrew O’Hagan

1998:

• Amsterdam – Ian McEwan
• Master Georgie – Beryl Bainbridge
• England England – Julian Barnes
• The Industry of Souls – Martin Booth
• Breakfast on Pluto – Patrick McCabe
• The Restraint of Beasts – Magnus Mills

1997:

• The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy Very nice and moving book. I loved the doomed love story.
• Quarantine – Jim Crace
• The Underground Man – Mick Jackson
• Grace Notes – Bernard MacLaverty
• Europa – Tim Parks
• The Essence of the Thing – Madeleine St. John

1996:

• Last Orders – Graham Swift
• Alias Grace – Margaret Atwood
• Every Man for Himself – Beryl Bainbridge
• Reading in the Dark – Seamus Deane
• The Orchard on Fire – Shena Mckay
• A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry

1995:

• The Ghost Road – Pat Barker
• In Every Face I Met – Justin Cartwright
• The Moor’s Last Sigh – Salman Rushdie Not Salman Rushdie’s best. Enjoyed it, but if you have never read Rushdie, this is not the book to start off with.
• Morality Play – Barry Unsworth
• The Riders – Tim Winton

1994:

• How Late It Was, How Late – James Kelman
• Beside the Ocean of Time – George Mackay Brown
• Reef – Romesh Gunesekera
• Paradise – Abdulrazak Gurnah
• The Folding Star – Alan Hollinghurst
• Knowledge of Angels – Jill Paton Walsh

1993:

• Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha – Roddy Doyle
• Under the Frog – Tibor Fischer
• Scar Tissue – Michael Ignatieff
• Remembering Babylon – David Malouf
• Crossing the River – Caryl Phillip
• The Stone Diaries – Carol Shields

1992:

• The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje
• Sacred Hunger – Barry Unsworth
• Serenity House – Christopher Hope
• The Butcher Boy – Patrick McCabe
• Black Dogs – Ian McEwan
• Daughters of the House – Michele Roberts

1991:

• The Famished Road – Ben Okri
• Time’s Arrow – Martin Amis
• The Van – Roddy Doyle
• Such a Long Journey – Rohinton Mistry
• The Redundancy of Courage – Timothy Mo
• Reading Turgenev (from Two Lives) – William Tevor

1990:

• Possession – A.S. Byatt
• An Awfully Big Adventure – Beryl Bainbridge
• The Gate of Angels – Penelope Fitzgerald
• Amongst Women – John McGahern
• Lies of Silence – Brian Moore
• Soloman Gursky Was Here – Mordecai Richler

And that’s it folks! Looks like I have read only a handful

I was quite surprised to realize that not only were most of the books unknown to me but also most of the authors.

Huge reading gaps!!

Oh well, that just means more books left for me to read right?

So, what do you think about reading Man Bookers, do you think it is your kind of reading? Or are you left frequently underwhelmed? My experiences have been pretty mixed. Some good, some ok, and some were what the hell were they thinking?

Which is your fave Man Booker novel? Which one did you loathe?

If you’d like to take this meme, feel free to post about it in your blog and link to me.