Prizewinning influence.

In the week when the Booker Prize 2020 winner was announced, I have been thinking about prizewinners and the books I have bought or not bought under the influence of the book having won a prize. Firstly, congratulations to the youngest ever Booker prize winner

Marieke Lucas Rijnevelds for his debut novel The Discomfort of Evening and I must say, I am very tempted to read this one. Is it because it is a prize winner, possibly but it has not had an influence on me before. I think this sounds like an interesting read.

There has been some great winners of this and many other prizes over the years. I have checked along my shelves and I was surprised to see how many prize winners I have particular books that had won the Costa Book Awards but this did not influence my purchase.

I think that prizes are great to catapult books to the forefront and I am not sure I would have come across this particular title if it wasn't for the fact that it has won this prize.

Are you tempted to buy a book because it has won a prize?

A little detail about some of the prizes.

Costa Book Awards - The Costa Book Awards (formerly Whitbread Awards) honour books written by authors based in the UK and Ireland. There are five categories: First Novel, Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children's Book, with one of the five winners chosen as Book of the Year. In 2012, they also introduced a short story prize.

The last overall winner was The Volunteer - Jack Fairweather.

The shortlist is announced every November and the prize winners are announced in January. The Book award for 2020, the shortlist will be announced on 24th November 2020 and the prize winners will be announced in January 2021.

Some previous winners include: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit - Jeanette Winterson The Witches - Roald Dahl

AA Milne: His Life - Ann Thwaite

Mean Time - Carol Ann Duffy

You can get a full list of previous winners from the Costa website here.

Nobel Prize in Literature -

The Nobel Prize in Literature is an annual award given by the Swedish Academy to authors for outstanding contributions in the field of literature. it was first presented in 1901, it has been presented 112 times to 116 Nobel Laureated. The first winner was "Sully Prudhomme “in special recognition of his poetic composition, which gives evidence of lofty idealism, artistic perfection and a rare combination of the qualities of both heart and intellect” (Source Nobelprize.org) The next prize for the Nobel Prize for Literature will be announced on Thursday 8 October, 13:00 CEST at the earliest.

The prize is awarded to an author and not for a specific work. Previous winners include:

You can find the full list of winners here.

Booker Prize for Fiction -

The Booker prize was first awarded in 1969. It is awarded each year for the best original novel written in the English language and published in the United Kingdom. It was limited

to novels written by Commonwealth, Irish, and South African citizens. Controversially it was opened up to any novel published in the English language in 2014.

The Booker Prize for Fiction is a highly prestigious award and much sought after.

Previous Winners include: (Affiliate links)