Booker club: Consolation by Michael Redhill
The past is much more lively than the present in an otherwise fascinating study of life in Toronto.
Booker judges robbed Catherine O’Flynn
Finally, a chance to bash the Booker judges. How could they let What Was Lost slip through the shortlist net?
Booker club: On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
The mainstream press loves this book, the blogosphere hates it. I'm not one to argue with blogosphere.
Booker club: Gifted by Nikita Lalwani
This story of an Anglo-Indian maths prodigy is a good enough read but it doesn't, alas, add up to that much.
Booker club: Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
In an uneven but ultimately lovable novel, Lloyd Jones gives us an unusual setting and a cast of characters to match.
The digested shortlist
The shortlisted books for the Man Booker prize 2007, as read by John Crace.
Booker club: The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
The shortlist's out, but that isn't going to stop us ... on with the longlist booker club. And frankly, despite some clear and vivid writing, I'm surprised Hamid's novel made the final six.
Booker club: The Gathering by Anne Enright
This novel ticked most of the Irish cliches on my list ... yet it is nuanced, hilarious, and not to be underestimated.
Booker club: The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng
This novel evokes inevitable comparisons with Joseph Conrad. But it's also like a Merchant Ivory film with lots of martial arts.
Booker club: Self Help by Edward Docx
I don't see anything mortally sinful about the presence of bourgeois writers, and books, on the long and shortlists. But once they get as navel-gazing as the creatures in this book, I begin to gag.
Booker club: The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies
The great British books award sometimes defies the cynics and shortlists great novels. Not this time.
Booker club: Darkmans by Nicola Barker
First up for scrutiny in my yomp through this year's Booker contenders is a novel of lurid strangeness in the most mundane of settings.
Judging the Booker by its covers
I'm hoping you'll join me in a careful assessment of this year's prize contenders over the coming weeks. In the meantime, why let not having read any of them interfere with making some satisfyingly snap judgments?
Book-burning threat over town’s portrayal in Booker-winning novel
When she won the Booker prize, Kiran Desai lifted the town of Kalimpong into the glare of the media spotlight. But few in the town are now thanking her for setting her novel, The Inheritance of Loss, there. Internet forums hum with indignation about the book's "condescending statements", while others threaten public book-burnings.
And the winner is?
Michael Jackson has won 240 of them. Frank Gehry has bagged 130. The culture of prize-giving has gone mad. It has replaced the art of criticism in determining cultural value and shaping public taste. We enjoy the glamour of a Booker or an Oscar night, but we lose something too in this orgy of awards, says Jason Cowley.