One of the first web pages I ever developed, back in the mid-90s, was my site devoted to the Man Booker Prize. I started it as a means of keeping track of books that won the prize, and the others which had been shortlisted, so I had a handy list - this was before PDAs.
I kept on adding to the pages over the years, with lists of authors and nominated titles and then struck on the idea of adding a page which highlighted novels which might make the shortlist. This was just a bit of pot-luck really. There was no way I was going to be able to read everything that might be nominated, so I had to rely on word-of-mouth and the various book reviews I read over the web from British newspapers.
I've just created a new page for the 2005 Booker Prize Shortlist Possibles which will be gradually added to over the coming few months, leading up to the announcement of the longlist for the prize. This is a bit later in the year than usual, due, in part, to the work I'm doing here but I hope it is of interest to some people.
All the usual suspects are listed (Ishiguro, Rushdie, McEwan and Barnes) but there are always some whose work might or might not be entered due to publication problems. The British authors have no difficulties here because as soon as a major writer submits a work it is scheduled for a publication date that makes it eligible for the award. The hard ones are those from the "colonies", eg Australia and South Africa. If the novel has a British publication date in the year leading up to the start of September then there's no basic difficulty. But what about a novel like Andrew McGahan's The White Earth? After winning the Miles Franklin Award following its publication in Australia in May 2004, it is not scheduled for UK release until January 2006. So what does this mean for its eligibility? I've got a feeling it's missed the boat. But I might well be wrong.
[I have been told that my Booker pages are not viewable using Firefox. Given the increasing popularity of this browser I'm going to have to spend some time soon re-doing the Javascript behind the pages. Just a matter of finding the time and energy.]
