Stuff.
From The Booker To My Book Of The Year.
When I was five I won a prize at school…..
I came fourth – I think.
The prize was a book. But the kid who came fifth seemed to have a better book than me.
So we swopped.
Every since I’ve liked book prizes.
But only liked them enough to be half influenced by them and half taking-the-piss out of them!
Posh Bingo
Julian Barnes
'I Got To The Stage Where I Couldn't Read A Laundry List Without Considering It For The Shortlist!'
Bernice Rubens on being a Booker Prize Judge in 1986
'People Aren't Quite Sure What It Means When A Book Is A Booker Prize Winner!'
Kazuo Ishiguro on the Booker Prize
'You Swopped?!!! You Swopped Prizes With George Bryce?!'
My Mum. Hillend Primary Prize Giving. 1966
My Book Of The Year Prize For 2020
The Front Runners……….
The Boy The Mole The Fox and The Horse by Charlie Mackesy
Easily the front runner – as it’s only book I’ve read so far this year…. it’s really good though!
A Known Known
Normal People by Sally Rooney
Bought it. Read it. Loved it. Loved it so much it was the best thing I read in the whole of 2018. Can’t imagine anything being able to beat this to the overall prize!
A Known Known
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
This book won the ‘First Novel’ category at the Costas and it’s a book I really enjoyed. It’s a really clever and engrossing thriller with a fairly unusual premise – but it worked for me! Mind you, much as I liked it, it doesn’t come close to the Sally Roone novel for me!
An Unknown Unknown
The Skylarks War by Hilary MacKay
Winner in the Children’s Book category. Back in my primary teaching days this would have been very much on my radar as I was always on the lookoutfor good children’s fiction to either read aloud or to use as a study text. This story of a family as their carefree summers ends and the onset of war is on the horizon sounds like it would have made a great read or a great study text – or both!
A Unknown Unknown
The Cut Out Girl by Bart van Es
This was the winner in the ‘Biography’ category and until it’s selection I’d never heard of it. However the story of a man’s search for the story behind a girl who his gradparents took in and looked after to protect her from being sent to Nazi concentration camps has had great reviews and sounds like it would be a powerful moving read
A Known Unknown
Assurances by J.O. Morgan
Morgan is a Scottish poet from Edinburgh, I bought this a few weeks back when it made the Costa shortlist…but as yet I’ve not actually opened it! However if it wins the overall prize I’ll have to rectify that PDQ!