Jean Baird's Booker Prize Project

Dooneyscafe.com is pleased to provide you with Jean Baird's year-by-year analysis of the Booker Prize jury deliberations.

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1983

Jean Baird uploads her analysis of 1983. She thinks Graham Swift should have won for Waterland. J.M. Coetzee did.

1982

Jean Baird files her report on the 1982 Booker, which was won by Thomas Keanally’s Schindler’s List. She also has some choice remarks about Canada Reads.

1981

Fall in Canada is prize season. In 2009, The Writers’ Trust of Canada changed its pattern to be part of the parade (previously the Trust awards were announced in the spring). So let’s do some comparison-shopping. The Writers’ Trust fiction prize short-list: Nicole Brossard (Susanne de Lotbiniere-Harwood, translator) Fences in Breathing Douglas CouplandGeneration A Annabel [...]

1980

I think it’s now time to have a closer look at the Booker prize rules and see how they might be affecting the outcomes. Over the years the GG and Giller have had multiple—and different kinds of—winners  and the prize administrators have changed the rules. That is also true of the Booker, which now has [...]

1979

Jean Baird uploads 1979, the year when V.S. Naipaul should have won, but for a lot of poor reasons, didn’t.

1978

Jean Baird does the 1978 Booker nominees, and talks to Paul Quarrington. George Bowering is watching television.

1977

Delayed by the summer holidays, Jean Baird uploads her analysis of 1977. We’re going to move a little faster through the years from here.

1976

Jean Baird posts 1976 in her Booker Prize Analysis

1975

1975 I’ve been at this project now for months, reading the shortlisted and winning books. In order to meet the demands of a prize that requires reading 100 or more books, considering the time allotted, jurors must be reading 5 or more books a week. I’m not convinced that is possible—or desirable. How do judges [...]

1974

Jean Baird continues her analysis of the Booker Prize nominees, winners and juries–and provides an overview of the “Prize Culture” Canadian publishing has created.

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