Bert – Bert's Books

Posted on October 17, 2022 by Bert

Booker Prize Winners

Since the Booker Prize was launched in 1969 (then known as the Booker Prize for Fiction) it has become the most sought after literary award in British publishing.

As well as a £50,000 prize, the winner of the Booker receives a sales boost like no other with recent winners and a place in history.

We’ve gathered together a full list of the winners, plus a few interesting facts about them – perfect for those who are planning on completing their collection, or for those who are just revising for their next pub quiz.

Don’t forget, you can sign up to the Booker Prize subscription – you’ll receive one or two of the collection each month!

1969: Something to Answer For by P H Newby

1970: The Elected Member by Bernice Rubens

1970: Troubles by J G Farrell

Shortly after the Booker Prize was launched, the rules were changed, which meant that all books published in 1970 were ineligible for entry. The Lost Booker Prize was eventually awarded in 2010 to JG Farrell – in retrospect making Farrell the first person to win the Booker twice. Sort of.

1971: In a Free State by V S Naipaul

1972: G. by John Berger

Berger donated half of his winnings to the British Black Panther movement, because he agreed with its politics and not with those of the Booker Group.

1973: The Siege of Krishnapur by J G Farrell

1974: The Conservationist by Nadine Gordimer and Holiday by Stanley Middleton

The shortlist for this year included Kingsley Amis’s novel “Ending Up”, which I’m sure had nothing to do with the fact his wife was on the judging panel that year.

1975: Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

The judges were so unimpressed with the submissions for this year’s prize that of the eighty-three titles they looked at, they only deemed two of them worthy of the shortlist.

1976: Saville by David Storey

1977: Staying On by Paul Scott

Philip Larkin was the chair of the panel this year and was so keen on “Staying On” winning that he threatened to jump out of the window if it didn’t.

1978: The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch

1979: Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald

At 132 pages, this is the shortest book to have won the prize. So far…

1980: Rites of Passage by William Golding

1981: Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

1982: Schindler’s Ark by Thomas Keneally

The book was adapted into the 1993 film “Schindler’s List”, directed by Steven Spielberg, which went on to win seven Academy Awards

1983: Life & Times of Michael K by J M Coetzee

1984: Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner

1985: The Bone People by Keri Hulme

This was the first book by a debut novelist to win the prize.

1986: The Old Devils by Kingsley Amis

1987: Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively

1988: Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey

1989: The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

Like the 1982 winner, this was also made into a 1993 film starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson, the latter of whom got an Academy Award nomination for her role

1990: Possession: A Romance by A S Byatt

1991: The Famished Road by Ben Okri

1992: The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje and Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth

In 2018, a Golden Booker Prize was awarded to mark 50 years of the award, with “The English Patient” winning that too.

1993: Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle

1994: How late it was, how late by James Kelman

1995: The Ghost Road by Pat Barker

This was the first sequel to win the prize.

1996: Last Orders by Graham Swift

1997: The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

1998: Amsterdam by Ian McEwan

1999: Disgrace by J M Coetzee

This win gave J M Coetzee the honour of being the first author to win the Booker Prize twice. Five authors have now had two wins, while Margaret Atwood and Iris Murdoch lead the tables with the most nominations with six each.

2000: The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

2001: True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey

2002: Life of Pi by Yann Martel

The tiger in the book, Richard Parker, gets his name from that of a stranded mutineer in the Edgar Allen Poe novel, “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket”.

2003: Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre

2004: The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst

2005: The Sea by John Banville

2006: The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai

This year also saw a special Booker Prize go to Beryl Bainbridge, who had been nominated five times but never won. The organisers acknowledge that it counts as an official Booker Prize too.

2007: The Gathering by Anne Enright

2008: The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

2009: Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

Mantel took five years to write “Wolf Hall”, and her research included a card catalogue containing information on where every historical character in the books had really been and what they had been doing on those days in history.

2010: The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson

2011: The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

This marked the eighth win for the publishing house Jonathan Cape, making them the most successful publishing house at the awards.

2012: Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel

2013: The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

To date, this is the longest winner at 832 pages.

2014: The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

2015: A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James

Had Bert been on the panel this year, he would’ve pulled a Philip Larkin and threatened to leap out of the window had “A Little Life” not won.

2016: The Sellout by Paul Beatty

2017: Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

2018: Milkman by Anna Burns

“Milkman” is notable for not naming a single character or location.

2019: The Testaments by Margaret Atwood and Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo

Bernadine Evaristo was the first black woman to win the award.

2020: Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart

2021: The Promise by Damon Galgut

In the twelve weeks after his win, Galgut sold more copies of his books than he had in the previous seventeen years.

2022: TBC…

Posted on July 24, 2021November 20, 2023 by Bert

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an FAQ?

It’s a frequently asked question. As in a question that gets asked a lot. If you’ve got a question and think you’re probably not the first person to ask it, then the answer to it might be here.

How much does delivery cost?

If you’re in the UK, delivery is absolutely free! Hurrah! We send our books out on a 48 hour service with Royal Mail.

If, however, you want our priority service, you can pay an £3 at the checkout and we’ll bump you up to the top of the list and send your parcel out within two days (if we can get the stock, of course).

You can also select to pick the book(s) up in store, which will cost you – and us – nothing!

What about if I’m not in the UK?

It’s a flat rate of £9 per parcel but, unfortunately, I’m not able to send books to the EU because of complicated tax rules.

Please note, I am limited to a weight of 2kg per parcel, which roughly equates to 3 hardbacks or 6 paperbacks, depending on the size of books bought. If you are buying multiple books from overseas, please contact bert@bertsbooks.co.uk before placing your order.

You may receive an email following your order advising of additional shipping charges.

When are books dispatched?

Books are dispatched every weekday (not including bank holidays), and ideally your book will be dispatched within five days of being ordered. I’ll let you know if it’s going to be longer than that.

If you need your book by a certain day for a birthday, etc, just let me know and I’ll do my best to move it up the queue.

I’ve been told my book has been dispatched but it’s not here yet – where is it?

We send our parcels with Royal Mail on a 48 hour service, but they can take up to two weeks to arrive. If you haven’t received your books two weeks after you’ve had a dispatch notice, email me and I’ll look into it for you.

What are the subscription bundles?

They contain the best new releases on the website. Whether your tastes are for non-fiction, crime or young adult fiction, we can provide you with the very best books that are hot off the printing press.

When do I get the books I’ve subscribed to?

Standard monthly subscriptions are sent out at the end of each month, with the aim that you’ll get them on the 1^st of the month. Orenda books, however, are dispatched by the 15^th of each month. All other subscriptions are dispatched within five working days of their renewal.

What do I do if I get a book I’ve already read or don’t want in a subscription?

All the books in the subscriptions will have been released in the previous four weeks (although paperbacks may have previously been hardbacks) but anything that doesn’t tickle your fancy can be returned via the returns policy. You should never get a duplicate of a book you’ve bought from Bert’s previously – and If you let me know on Twitter or via email of the stuff you might have bought from another retailer (?!) , I’ll try my best to remember that too.

And what exactly is that returns policy?

If you want to return something, let me know within 14 days of receiving it, then post it back. You’ll have to cover the costs of postage, but it’s up to you whether you choose a tracked delivery. As soon as the book is back with me, your money will be refunded.

What happens if my book arrives damaged?

That’s no problem. Just let me know, and I’ll replace it!

Overseas customers may experience some minor cosmetic damage due to local couriers. While we will pack the parcel to minimise this, we cannot guarantee it won’t happen and replacements will not be offered in these instances.

Overseas collectors should be aware of this before placing their order that we do not guarantee mint condition books.

When do you take payment for the subscriptions?

Payment is automatically taken in the month before you receive the books, so if you sign up on the 30^th April, you’ll receive your first bundle in May, but if you sign up on 1^st May, your first bundle will be with you in June.

How do I cancel my subscription?

I can’t imagine why you’d want to, but you can manage all your subscriptions within your account, or contact us directly to have it sorted for you.

What’s all this about Bert Points?

For every £1 you spend on the website, you’ll get 50 Bert Points. 50 Points is worth 5p off your next purchase. One £20 book, for example, will accrue you 1000 points, which is £1 off your next order. Bargain! You’ll be reminded at the purchase point that you’ve got points to spend.

Is there an upper limit of Bert Points I can have?

You can spend as many as you can accrue, but they expire after six months.

Why can’t I find the book I want?

Everything on the website is there because Bert has read it and loved it, or because a customer has requested it. This ensures a high quality of stock available – these are all good books. If you would like a book added, contact bert@bertsbooks.co.uk. You can also find me us on Twitter at @bertsbooks, but an email means you’re less likely to get missed.

Why haven’t you replied to my email?

I try and email you back as soon as possible, but sometimes this might be a couple of days depending on how many emails we’ve got. We’ll always answer urgent emails right away. Double check your junk mail folder too – just in case!

Will you put the book I wrote on the website?

If I’ve read it and think it’s good, or if a customer requests it, certainly.

Will you read my book?

Ask your publisher to send me a proof and I’ll take a look. If you don’t have a publisher, then email me the details of your book and if I want to read it, I’ll ask you to send a copy over. I can’t read digital books, I’m afraid, and I can’t respond to every author request.

What is your favourite flavour of crisps?

Salt and vinegar, best served in a sandwich with a Dairylea cheese triangle. (Other cheeses are available.)

What is your favourite book?

There is not enough time to get into this…

Posted on January 9, 2021 by Bert

A Little Life – A Big Review

This post was originally published back in 2015 in a previous life, on a previous blog. I thought I’d share it for you now so you can see just why I love A Little Life so much

It’s not often that I’m wrong, it’s an even more infrequent occurrence that I admit that I’m wrong. But I was.

Earlier this year, I read A Place Called Winter by Patrick Gale and I wouldn’t stop raving about it. I even, what now seems a touch prematurely, considering it was January, billed it as my book of 2015.

I was wrong.

And that’s not to do down A Place Called Winter, it’s still within my top five books of all time, and most other years, would easily win the book of the year title.

But, a few months ago, a book by Hanya Yanagihara landed on my desk at work. It’s a big brick of a book, over seven hundred pages, and I knew nothing about it. I hadn’t even read the blurb, but I was told by a colleague that I would enjoy it. Mostly because he knew I enjoyed The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt.

So what was I expecting? The great American novel. A bit of a saga. Not much else.

The blurb tells us it is the tale of four friends, JB, Malcolm, Willem and Jude. But really, it is the story of Willem and Jude. But REALLY, it is the story of Jude.

We meet them when they’ve first moved to New York and Willem and Jude are looking for a place to live together. It is made clear at the very beginning, they are not a couple, nor are they brothers. They are simply friends. Best friends.

And that is what the story is about; the importance of friendship, how it effects our lives and how it can be bigger, yet more uncategorised than romantic love, than sexual love.

A Little Life is the story of love between men. It explores all aspects of it, and it does so beautifully, and yet so tragically.

It’s very difficult to talk about this novel without giving anything away, or indeed without going on for pages about the tiny point that you want to talk about, so perhaps the best thing to do is to tell you about the structure of the book.

The titular little life in question is that of Jude St Francis, and it is through a non-linear construction that we learn about it. He is mysterious, and reluctant to talk about his past, to the point that his friends, his closest friends know nothing of him, except not to ask.

It is over seven hundred pages long, but each section, each chapter, feels like its own book. We learn in them the stories of all four characters to varying degrees, and though some of the chapters are as long as eighty pages, the prose and the characters are so elegantly drawn, it is impossible not to get swept away.

Cathy Rentzenbrink wrote in the Bookseller that she read the book in one night. This is unbelievable, believable, and unbelievable again all at once.

Initially, the size of the book is off-putting. It certainly doesn’t strike you as a quick read and the first thirty to forty pages are confusing. There are so many male twenty-something characters that it is difficult to tell them apart.

But then, something clicks and you’re not just able to tell the characters apart, but they have started to become part of you. The book starts to become part of you and although you kind of broadly know what’s going to happen, you have to read on. And that’s when you understand how it’s possible to have read it one night.

The desire to read on is strong, but what I can’t understand, is how anyone can be emotionally stable enough to read it in one sitting. There is a point about a third of the way through – and I don’t think this spoils anything – where the tragic background of Jude starts to become clear, and you realise that this is a book that’s going to break your heart.

That’s not to say it is filled with unrelenting misery. I read A Little Life at the same time that I downloaded Will Young’s latest album 85% Proof. It’s a typical Will Young album, cracking vocals, a little bit dance-y but quite melancholy, but I had it playing in the background as I read parts of the book, and every song on it seemed to fit the plot.

Three songs stand out:

Thank You – a song from Jude to Caleb

Blue – a song from Willem to Jude, that actually contains the line “We live a little life”

And Joy – a song that is melodically upbeat and happy, but is lyrically about hope. “Nothing really matters, we’ve got everything we need, take a big leap and we will feel joy.”

It’s a song about daring to hope that things are going to work out, and that is the pervading feeling that you get from this book. Life is miserable, bad things happen, but the characters in this book are not just living little lives, they’re living great ones, because of the relationships and friendships that they form with each other.

There’s a whole section of the book in the last third called “The Happy Years” and by the time you get there and you see the heading, your heart sinks, because you know that nothing is going to stay happy, by this point, you know it’s a book that’s not only going to break your heart, it’s going to shatter it and use the bits to create itself a home.

And there are moments during The Happy Years where you’re screaming at the characters, urging them to just… well, I shan’t say. But you are. They’re making themselves miserable and it’s unbearable.

Then, at the end of The Happy Years, at their happiest, something happens, in the last three to four paragraphs. I had to put the book down and walk away.

It was a Sunday afternoon, and there were maybe a hundred pages or so left. I had time to finish it before going for dinner at my mum’s, but by this point, I knew that I would not be in any state come the end of the book, where I would be able to be around people, let alone make small talk with my granddad and mum.

I came back in the evening, curled up on the sofa with a glass of wine and began to read.

I started with Will Young playing in the background, but it became clear after just one page that the music wasn’t suitable. Not because it didn’t match, but because I was being sucked into this world. Into Jude’s world.

It doesn’t spoil anything to say that first part of the last section is told from Jude’s point of view – as I’ve already said, the book is told in a non-linear structure – and I started to cry.

I’m not a big crier. I’m not emotional. But sometimes when watching a film, or a TV program, a small tear will escape. It happens more often with books, where one or two tears will trickle down my face. It last happened with A Place Called Winter, and previously to that it happened with the book that I won’t name (I’ve mentioned this book before, but it’s becoming less and less important to me that I don’t share it, perhaps one day, I will).

In the space of 98 pages, I cried four times. A trickle or two of a tear. Maybe on one occasion three tears, because I really screwed up my face and squeezed that third one out. This was surprising enough to me, to know that A Little Life had truly affected me, but then…

The last section of the book is a letter from Harold – Jude’s adoptive father, and it had made a tear escape already once. And then there is the payoff to a moment three or four hundred pages earlier and I immediately started to sob.

Big, unmanly, tears misting my eyes, properly crying.

I had to put the book down, two pages from the end, because I couldn’t see to read. I had to compose myself before I could bring myself to carry on any further.

To people who want more than plot from their books, the kind of person who might enjoy The Goldfinch, then I would ask you to please read this book, to stick with it past that first confusing section (which by the way, I think is intentional, because it seems ridiculous now, that one could confuse any of these characters).

I was wrong when I said A Place Called Winter was my book of the year. It’s still a very good book, one of the best. But, if there’s a book better than A Little Life, I don’t have the emotional strength to read it for at least six months, and so I am crowning A Little Life my book of 2015.

It’s probably the book of my life.

Posted on September 3, 2020October 19, 2023 by Bert

Upcoming Books

Do you find it hard to keep up with all the exciting new books due to be published? Do you wish there was one handy list that had all the best ones in one place, arranged by date?

Then you’re in luck! I’ve listed below everything that is currently available to pre-order on Bert’s Books – I’ll update it regularly too, so keep this page bookmarked and come back regularly! AND finally, if there’s anything you’re desperate to get your hands on, that you can’t find below, then let me know!

24th October 2023