The Man Booker Prize Explained

The Man Booker Prize site

From the site:

"The Man Booker Prize promotes the finest in fiction by rewarding the very best book of the year. The prize is the world's most important literary award and has the power to transform the fortunes of authors and even publishers...."

"The prize, which celebrated its 40th anniversary last year, aims to reward the best novel of the year written by a citizen of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. The Man Booker judges are selected from the country's finest critics, writers and academics to maintain the consistent excellence of the prize. The winner of the Man Booker Prize receives £50,000 and both the winner and the shortlisted authors are guaranteed a worldwide readership plus a dramatic increase in book sales."

Our All-Time Favorites

Please contribute to this section!  Send an email or a comment, and we'll grow our list.

Novels (Great Stuff)

• Everything is Illuminated by Jonathon Safran Foer
• The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
• Song of the Dodo by David Quammen

Novels (Guilty Pleasures)

• Shining Through by Susan Isaacs

What Else We're Reading

Books

August 2010

Brooklyn by Colm Toibin
The Center Cannot Hold by Elin Saks
Whip It by Shauna Cross
The Island by Elin Hilderbrand
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

July 2010

• Typee by Herman Melville
• Last Night in Twisted River by John Irving
• Bluebeard's Egg by Margaret Atwood
• Under the Broken Sky by Shandee Mitchell
• Innocence by Scott Turow
• A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr
• The Odyssey by Homer
• To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
• The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
• I Was Told There'd be Cake by Sloan Crosley
• Baby Proof by Emily Giffin
• Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and The Brain by Jon Ratey
• Falling Apart in One Piece by Stacy Morrison
• The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
• Seeking Peace: Chronicles of the World's Worst Buddhist by Mary Pipher
• The Wife's Tale by Lori Lansens
• Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof
• Whip It by Shauna Cross

June 2010

• Infidel by Ayyan Hirsi Ali
• Henderson's Spear by Ronald Wright
• The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore
• Staying True by Jenny Sanford
• The Heart of the Matter by Emily Giffin
• O. Henry Short Stories
• Love the One You're With by Emily Giffin

May 2010

• The White Queen by Phillippa Gregory
• The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff
• Little Bee by Chris Cleave
• Orange is the New Black: My Year In A Woman's Prison by Piper Kerman
• How to Be Good by Nick Hornby
• Little  Prisoner: How a Childhood was Stolen and Betrayed by Jane Elliott
• Lasr Chance To See by Douglas Adams
• In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
• The Servant by Robin Maugham
• On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King
• How I Write by Janet Evanovich
• Strangers On A Train Patricia Highsmith
• The Storyteller by Patricia Highsmith

February 2010

• The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
• Old Filth by Jane Gardam
• Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
• II, Henry IV Part 1; 2, Henry V by William Shakespeare
• The Loss of Leon Meed by Josh Emmons
• The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass
• World Without End by Ken Follett
• What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell

January 2010

• The Vintage Caper by Peter Mayle

December 2009

• The Kid Stays in the Picture by Robert Evans
• Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
• The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff
• Mrs. Miracle by Debbie Macomber
• Under the Dome by Stephen King
• Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• Thunder Run: The Armored Strike to Capture Baghdad by David Zucchino
• Wolf At The Table: A Memoir of My Father by Augusten Burroughs
• Being There by Jerzy Kosinski
• Jealousy by Robbe-Grillet
• The Body Artist by Don DeLillo
• The World According to Garp by John Irving
• Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
• Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

November 2009

• Edie: Girl on Fire by Melissa Painter and David Weisman
• The Loss of Leon Meed by Josh Emmons
• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
• Sunset Landscaping in the Southwest
• Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More by Chris Anderson
• Inherent Vice by Thomas Pinchon
• Chicago by Alaa Al Aswany
• 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell
• Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• House of Night (series - Book 4) by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast

October 2009

• In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan - 10/2009
• The Battle for Love and Wine: Or How I Saved the World from Parkerization by Alice Feiring - 10/2009
• Belong to Me by Marisa de los Santos - 10/2009
• Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood - 10/2009
• Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert (HATED IT) - 10/2009
• When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris (Do not recommend) - 10/2009

September 2009

• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger - 9/2009
• Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult - 9/2009
• Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality by Brian Green - 9/2009
• The Monk by Matthew Lewis - 9/2009
• A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood - 9/2009
• The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion - 9/2009

Authors

• Annie Dillard - 9/2009
• Cormac McCarthy - 9/2009
• Leo Tolstoy - 9/2009