The Bookers and the National Book Awards

I have been thinking about starting a book blog for a month or two.  What has propelled me to go ahead and start it is the pursuit of reading as many Man Booker and National Book Award winning books as I can this year.  I wanted a place to record my book reviews along with my rants and raves.

I don't know why the thought occurred to me to read these books.  Maybe is was the fact that I am slightly disillusioned with the Tournament of Books?  Maybe I just like lists? Maybe is was that I started reading The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood last night and realized it was a Man Booker winner?  Maybe it was because I read both the 2011 Man Booker and National Book Award winning books for the TofB?  Regardless, I decided I wanted to add this pursuit to my reading goals this year.

Here is the list of the National Book Award Winners I will be using:
http://www.nationalbook.org/nbawinners_category.html#fict

and here is the Man Booker list:  http://www.themanbookerprize.com/prize/archive

I added all of the winners from 2000-2012 of both awards to my to read list on goodreads.  Each in their own category.  I also included any award winner from earlier years that was already in my to read list.  This gave me 19 Man Booker and 15 National Book Award Books.  Of these I have already read a grand total of 3!  Several were on my to read list, but many more I have never heard of!

I do not know how many of these I will read this year, but when I am not reading a book club book or something else calls my name, I will work from this list.  If I finish these, I may go back and add some more from earlier years.  It will be interesting for me to see who is the best of the best or if a book that never made the list is the best...