A message from my dog

This weekend, my dog convinced himself that he was a cat. Also, he wishes you a happy day!

Scampi Sundays!

I thought I'd share what I had for lunch today and how I made it. I don't have any plans for the weekend, just read up on my YA, study a bit, and then pray for my dad. I'm very glad a new week (and month!) will be coming in tomorrow, though. I hated October a little, and November will be great. I can feel it!:)

SCAMPI SUNDAYS!

In which I share a recipe for shrimp scampi pasta^* 

What you need:

1/4 cup olive oil

2 tablespoons butter

peeled and deveined medium-sized shrimp (about 250g.)

4 large garlic cloves, minced

1/2 teaspoon dried red pepper flakes (you can wave this off if you don't like heat, I don't)

salt and pepper

some pasta 

chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley (but basil is fine too)

(some people add white wine, about half a cup but I suggest skip this step and drink the damn thing instead)

What you need to do:

Bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Cook pasta in boiling water until just tender. Reserve a portion of pasta-cooking water (this is a legit Giada DiLaurentis cooking tip), then drain pasta. Heat oil in a pan over moderately high heat until hot but not smoking, then sauté shrimp, turning over once, until just cooked through, about 2 minutes. Transfer with a slotted spoon to a bowl. Add garlic to oil remaining in skillet along with red pepper flakes, wine (if you're maarte), salt, and pepper and cook over high heat, stirring occasionally, 1 minute. Add butter to skillet, stirring until melted, and stir in shrimp. Remove skillet from heat. Toss pasta well with shrimp mixture and parsley in large bowl, adding some of reserved cooking water if necessary to keep moist (or they will clump together).

Eat. Enjoy.

^*This is a relatively fool-proof but absolutely delicious dish, once you get the timing for cooking the shrimp right. Shrimp when undercooked is just bad, it's mushy and it will leave an itchy sensation on your tongue. When overcooked, on the otherhand, shrimp is just tough and useless so you have got to watch your shrimp carefully. It must turn into a beautiful pink with the body slightly puffy from the deveining--that's when you remove the long vein at the back of the shrimp's body. Many celebrity cooks like Ina Garten and Giada DiLaurentis have their own versions of shrimp scampi. This is mine. It's not way off the original version but when I make one for myself, I tend to fill it up with so much garlic. It's delicious. 

Here comes the sun, little darling

Ten things that make me happy (We're celebrating despite this week being an extremely crappy week because the fact that I can tell that it's a crappy week means I've already had happier, better ones. Things like that are celebratory enough):

1. Reading good books

2. My own personal spirit team. In this age of listlessness and general uncertainty, it's so easy to give up on everything you once wanted or thought you needed. It's easy to convince yourself that you are not good at it, that the journey is long and hard, and that all signs point to the exit door. But while it's so easy to give up on yourself,  it's not so easy to let friends and family down especially when they believe in you, when they see something in you that you don't see yourself. With that, you try harder even if you don't want to anymore. You begin to become more resilient. And the fruits of resilience, as we all know, is just magnificent.
3. Tequila Rose margaritas and/or Strawberry flavored Grand Margaritas
4. Grey's Anatomy and Happy Endings, but mostly Derek Shepherd and all that hair. (A close runner-up would be Teddy Altman and her chiseled cheekbones accentuated by her big, goddess of a hair)
5. Stamps on my passport because there is nothing more spectacular than the pleasure of leaving
6. Movies that remind me of my childhood like Matilda and Little Rascals
7. Long conversations over coffee
8. Humility and generosity from accomplished people because there is a certain, almost Nirvana-like sense of security that only success (or an extremely well-rounded and healthy personality) can bring. There is nothing more humbling or inspiring than seeing someone so successful rise above it all, while other people scramble around for whatever it is they're looking for. Speaking of accomplished people, I love this Foreign Policy article on Condoleezza Rice and this foreign policy heavy transcript of Madame Secretary's interview with TIME (not that they fit what I just wrote but I multi-task, so.)
9. Fun (fictional) stories like New York's 20 Under 10 from Thought Catalog 
10.  The chance to feel and the chance to start all over again. Down days are temporary. Emotions are temporary. Voluminous amounts of sadness, anger, and depression come and go so it's okay to fight them and it's perfectly alright to feel them. It's okay to be sad, broken, and moody because these feelings are not permanent. We don't have to be happy all the time and when we feel less than stellar, that only means that after the dark and twisty days, we're going to run into happiness once again.

I think happiness is hard work. It is impossible to be happy all the time and to feel that everything is fine and dandy, especially in a world where disappointment management is routine. Life can sometimes feel like a confusing cycle of all things shitty and wonderful, of good luck and impeccably bad timing, of love and loss and the good can sometimes feel incommensurate with the bad. That doesn't mean that we have to stop working for what makes us happy, though. And to work for your happiness means feeling both sadness and glee to a fault, to push yourself into finding something hopeful amidst the bad: when you fail a test you wanted to ace, when friends say something that sting, when friends suddenly turn into strangers, when there is just too much going on yet you feel like it's all going nowhere, when you are sick, when you don't see eye to eye with your parents, when the general feeling of listlessness suddenly overwhelms you, when life isn't just as peachy as you planned it to be three years ago, when you don't feel like you will ever be enough, when you feel like you're being left behind, when you feel stuck, when you miss the people who are far away or those who are gone forever, when you feel like your whole world is held up by a thread that will snap one day soon, so that you can discern for yourself what is the real balance of happy and sad and how you gain something for anything and everything that you lack.

And when you do, when the dust settles back into the ground and you finally go back to all that is good and fantastic, tell the whole world about it. Truth be told, we could all use a little jolt of something bright. We all love a promise to a happy ending. Smile. The dog days are over or at least they will be, very soon. All will be well.

Let me leave you with a short list of songs that I listen to whenever I feel less than stellar:

1. The Dog Days Are Over - Florence and the Machine

Happiness hit her like a train on a track, coming towards her stuck, still no turning back 

2. The Ills - Mayer Hawthorne / Mr. Blue Sky - Mayer Hawthorne

You know the ills of this world they can get you down but then you get back up

3. Dust Me Off - Tilly and the Wall

Got to remember to fight off the darkness that comes in, sometimes 

Turn that sorrow into something that feels right

4. White Nights - Oh Land

There's a restlessness in me, keeps me up until the dawn

There is no silence, I will keep following the sirens

5. Roll With The Punches - Lenka

When life tries to knock all the wind out of you, you've got to roll, roll, roll with the punches

If all life offers is black and blue, you've got to roll, roll, roll with the punches

6. Clockwatching - Jason Mraz

Let's get backwards, and forget our restless destination

Let's live in the moment just in time, could we? 

7. Something Good Can Work - Two Door Cinema Club

Something good can work and it can work for you, and you know that it will

Let's get this started girl, we're moving up, we're moving up

It's been a lot to change but you will always get what you want

and my personal favorite...

8. Let's Dance to Joy Division - The Wombats

Let's dance to joy division, and celebrate the irony

Everything is going wrong, but we're so happy

Let's dance to joy division, and raise our glass to the ceiling

 Cos this could all go so wrong, but we're so happy

Winner, winner, chicken dinner

Two straight nights of chicken with my graduate school friends. I have to say that food is a strong motivation in graduate school. That and my obvious lack of a unique, potentially lucrative skill set (like drawing or computer programming or schmoozing), more than anything else. I shouldn't even be eating because I didn't perform very well this week. I did a total 360 and played like LeBron in the fourth quarter when I got to the second part of my test. (That is a basketball reference, basically LeBron James plays like a little bitch baby in the fourth quarter of many crucial games. He's a great player but when he chokes, he chokes hard.) 

As for the food, I have to say that Flaming Wings is infinitely better than Bon Chon. I get it. I get the paper thin skin that comes from a double fried chicken but Bon Chon chicken is not flavorful enough. Good chicken, definitely, but not something I'd choose over, say, Jollibee. Flaming Wings wins it in the wings department (I had a standard 3-pc. Chicken Wings (Soy Garlic) set in Bon Chon, 135php), it comes out cheaper (their Buffalo wings are sold for 147php, six pieces) plus they have more options and they have bigger servings too. Bon Chon Taft, in particular, is a little poor in frontline service. Perhaps it was because we came in at ten and the staff was just sleepy and tired so the cashier acted like she wanted to be slapped in the face. Still, something has to be done. I never complain about service but this store needs to work on theirs. 

Bon Chon Chicken

GF, University Mall

Taft Ave., Manila

__________________________

By the way, I stole a couple of photos from my classmate, Jay. Also, I really look dopey in real life. I have a particularly pathetic look on my face and I hate it. Add it to my lack of physical aptitude and a general gift of bad luck and you have a girl whose daily life is made up of tiny disasters. It adds up, you know, and it's disturbing to be so out of it most of the time that if I were a T.V. producer and my life was a show, I'd write my character off my own show. (Looking at you, Courtney Cox) /end of self-loathing.

Crunchy Choose day

It's a Choose day! Choose chicken. I have a BIG test tomorrow but hardly big enough (nothing ever is) to deter my appetite after a study session. I can't wait for Wednesday to be over, mostly because I am in need of a drink to cap this week off.

Flaming Wings' buffalo wings (Mild and sweet, bleu cheese sauce)

Ramen to that!

Ahoy! This week has been a whirlwind. It started with Monday and my willing myself to get better so that I can do ALL the things I wanted/had to do, in the middle of the week, I had class which I attended with a disgusting coughing fit (the victory lap of the sickness in my body, I guess) and then the week ended with me being in a limbo (productivity wise) and throwing all caution to the wind¹. It disturbs me that my work ethic is a bit bipolar, in that if I want to apply myself, I get really bossy and very into what I'm doing but if I don't want to work at all, not even the hand of God can make me. I'm going to work on re-calibrating that work/semblance of a life balance soon enough.

I did get lucky with friends and food this week though! For one, I had the pleasure of dining at Ramen Bar early this week. I must say, my instincts were right. The food is terrific. I've been wanting to get in touch with my inner Ramen Girl for quite a while now so I made a beeline for the ramen-ya when I found myself hungry in a remotely unknown area (The Fort).

Ramen Bar has a simple menu. I like the fact that their whole selection is printed on paper placemats. I think it's a very novel idea because having the menu right in front of you as you eat leaves you with a pretty strong urge to order something extra, especially when the food is so good.

The choices are straightforward and I really liked that because there are very few things more annoying than fussy menus (see: any food combinations that end with "emulsion" and/or "...topped with a cloud of *insert name of non-descript cheese*") They have a small selection of Japanese appetizers like Edamame (Young Japanese soy beans boiled in sea salt for 120php, very addictive) and Kakuni Buns (Pork belly wrapped in a white bun very reminscent of the Cantonese mantao bread, 180php), and if you have all the money in the world, I suggest you sample both. But the star of the noodle house would be their ramen bowls, of course. I counted about six in their menu and judging from what I had that day, I'm pretty sure each bowl is so darn satisfying.

I chose a side order of Chasyu. Chasyu is Japanese grilled pork. In Cantonese restaurants, it's called Char Siu and is often sliced thick and roasted with sugar and five spice powder. The Japanese version, Chasyu, uses pork belly instead of the usual shoulder. Judging by its clean and delicate flavor, I'm guessing Ramen Bar's Japanese chasyu is braised until it is soft and moist. This cooking process allows the chasyu to complement most (if not all) of the soup stocks in the ramen-ya. In Ramen Bar, each slice of pork belly has a wonderful layer of fat and meat and the ratio between the two is top-notch. Ramen Bar's chasyu slices are on the middle range, too. Not too thin but not too thick either, plus it wasn't greasy at all.  

I have to stop here and remember just how milky and savory these slices of pork belly were, served with a side of honey soy sauce, soy sauce, some oil and a dollop of mayo. Personally, I enjoyed eating the pork belly slices with a little bit of the sweet sauce and the crisp ribbonettes of what I think are leeks and chives. 

A plateful of Chasyu is priced at 120 pesos only. It's the same price you pay if you want Edamame. There was a very short debate going in my head at that time but eventually, the vicious carnivore in me won the argument. I'm glad it did. I regret nothing. The Chasyu was the highlight of my meal.

As for my noodles, I really wanted to get the Super Chasyu Ramen (380php), a soy-infused tonkotsu (tonkotsu means pork bone soup, usually boiled for over 20 hours) ramen topped with overflowing slices of chasyu and tamago since I knew that it packs so much flavor and would have a deceptively milky broth, but I didn't (because it was expensive and I already had a Chasyu plate).

I had a bowl of Shoyu ramen (280php) instead, a soy infused tonkotsu ramen topped with tamago (soft-boiled egg marinated for 48 hours), naruto (fish sticks), negi (dried seaweed) and chasyu (I believe this was explained at length somewhere in this entry). It was excellent. Imagine this: really hearty & savory (but fatty) soy-based broth, fresh kansui/egg noodles, superior slices of pork belly and that ni-tamago exploding with so much flavor you can't really explain. A good ni-tanago will have a set white part but a soft and runny yolk. It'll have a subtle flavor because it's steeped (not boiled) in stock for hours. There lies an entirely different kind of elation once you bite into the egg and the yolk oozes out to join the soup in your soup spoon. 

Noodles are always such a treat to eat. :)

Ramen Bar at the Piazza has two promos for its customers. There's the Ramen Bar Twitter Tuesday! where diners can stave off 10% from their bill by tweeting a promotional line for Ramen Bar. On Saturdays, they have a Facebook promo and though the instructions escape me at the moment, I would wager that it's probably along the lines of promoting the restaurant via the site. I'm not sure why I am telling you this but perhaps it will help if you're a cheapskate planning to visit.

I really enjoyed Ramen Bar. It is definitely worth your money, a bit more than your token Japanese fast food chains but personally, I believe expensive food is food you pay for even if you did not enjoy eating it.

Have some fun. Have a good bowl of noodles. Ramen Bar is located at The Venice Piazza in McKinley Hill, The Fort. There's also a branch at Unit 4-A, 1800 building, Eastwood City.


________________
¹  I have to say that the outcome of doing this was extremely satisfying, my superior flakiness aside.

A study in cupcakes

Honestly, I'm a better cook than baker, but there are not many dishes that can indulge my insatiable love for chocolate so sometimes, I turn to baking. Well, actually that's a bit of a lie. There are quite a lot of chocolate-based dishes out there (from foie gras, chocolate pasta, chocolate covered chicken wings, chocolate oxtail stew to what I believe would be my personal kryptonite once I finally make them, chocolate-covered bacon) but I'm not ready for any of them just yet. 

Today, we're going to do a study of the perfect manipulating tactic (up there with compassion and generosity): cupcakes that can and will kill. I am yet to meet someone who'll say no to cupcakes. I am also yet to meet a person who will turn down a box of cupcakes lovingly baked and boxed for his/her consumption. Cupcakes are the new red roses, I swear. Also, it's deceptive. Was it thoughtfully sent because you are liked or was it given to you so you can destroy your waistline with your own volition? Tricky, tricky. 

No, seriously, this is just a pseudo-process post of a small baking session I gave in to because I had nothing better to do (actually, I did but in typical fashion, I didn't want to do it so I baked instead). Warning: Too much chocolate is bad for asthmatics. Believe me, I know. Let's begin. 

The first step is to gather the chocolates you have lying around at home. Typically, I use chocolates that I don't like eating on their own. An example of chocolates you devour in its purest: Royce' Nama Chocolate with Cherry Marnier, an assortment of Lindt Lindor truffles and Patchi chocolates from Beirut. Chocolates you use for baking projects: Please see picture above. It's a simple analogy, really: If you're going to do crack, do grade A crack. Oh my God, I don't know why I'm writing these things down.

Next, pick out the basics. These are chocolates that do not have nuts or rice krispies in them. I have a fondness for dark chocolates so the majority of chocolate blocks in my cupcakes are dark. Special dark, actually. Mildly sweet, they have the flavor and consistency of baking chocolate. 

Then, you have to strip the chocolates off their wrapping paper. That sounds so dramatic but whatever. The fun part is that you have to take a knife and chop these beautiful morsels into even tinier pieces. Delightful, really. This is the highlight of the whole baking process, if I may say so myself. 

Chopped chocolates deserve three gold stars! My papa used to tell me that the stars and moon follow me around because I'm a very good little girl, and that they will stop following me if I misbehave. When I started getting stars in school, I immediately thought I must be very, very good to get so many stars around me. Thus, the birth of my inflated ego. That is a totally unrelated note but whenever I cook or bake, I get a tad nostalgic and I remember my father. I remember the disapproving look on his face which lasts up until he eats whatever it is I just made. :)  Oh-kay, moving on...

The next parts are the boring parts of the baking process. Of course, you have to dump all your cupcake ingredients in a bowl and beat them with an electric mixer. A lot of bakers have a beat this, beat that first, incorporate crap one by one into crap (LOL, JK. The eggs into the batter, not crap) kind of rule but I don't do that. I just dump mine in the bowl. (The recipe for my butter cupcakes is at the bottom part of this entry, right under the cut)

Next, you have to beat your mixture until it's smooth (make sure the lumps go away). I'm not sure if this is a legitimate baking tip but I like to aerate my batter so that my cupcakes come out light and fluffy. By aerate, I just mean incorporating a bit of air into the batter. (This is easier if you use a handheld electric mixer, which I do) At the end of mixing, the batter should be thick and rich.

The baking process gets better once you have to marry the chocolate bits into the batter. Oh, it is just lush, mixing the tiny bits of dark chocolate into a creamy, rich batter and then folding it over and over to ensure that the chocolates are, er, well-distributed.

This is what it looks like when you're done mixing. Strong-willed people are able to keep their fingers off the sides of the bowl. I have to say, I am not one of those people and although it probably puts me at risk for salmonella poisoning, I will keep tasting the batter for as long as I'm baking. The little things, people. Enjoy it. 

Next, you have to line your muffin pan with paper cups. I use two for each cupcake because my cups are on the cheap side (read: thin) These are not butter cupcakes you see in the picture but we need an example. I used a photo from when I baked chocolate cupcakes for my sister's end of exams celebration (Any excuse to eat, no?). By the way, it's more practical if you use an ice cream scoop to fill your pans. The cupcakes cook evenly that way.

See how Max from 2 Broke Girls does it? I'd like to think I bake like her but then she's from Brooklyn and  I'm a broke girl from the Third World. Also, she has a killer rack and I just walk along the lines of killer whale. By the way, this show is so good. It's even better than New Girl. It will also leave you craving for cupcakes and/or a chance to punch hipsters in the face.

The cupcakes go into a preheated 325F oven for exactly 20 minutes. My oven is a little wonky so I check every ten minutes and turn the sides of my baking pans for even cooking. When done, your butter cupcakes should be a nice golden brown. 

The cupcakes should taste fine on their own. The best part is when you bite into the cupcake and you taste the buttery cake and the bits of dark chocolate all at once. Eeez fantastic.  

The last part is leaving the cupcakes to cool on a rack but since I'm a lazy ass, I just leave them on a big plate to set. Of course, my sister had to talk me into making a small bowl of marshmallow icing for her own set of cupcakes (I gave her six). I don't pipe icing very well so I just use a spoon. 

When in doubt, add marshmallow icing! Personally, I think my butter cupcakes taste better without frosting. For me, they're best paired with coffee. ♥ 

There you have it, 24 pieces of cupcakes and an asthma attack waiting to happen. :) Butter cupcake recipe, as promised, is under the cut!

Culture Curious

In which The New York Times stroke your ego to get proper feedback because survey pop-ups are so uncool like¹. 

I took a short personality quiz from The New York Times today and I think it's very clever on their part to come up with a visual DNA personality quiz to get feedback from their readership. I read NYT all the time but like most people, I choose not to answer the reader feedback surveys they used to have. Anyway, this is really nice and because I am my number one pimpfan, I think it to be true. Try it yourself. 

PS. Here's my result:

You are culturally adve nturous in all walks of life and love to explore different avenues of tastes and trends. Because your body is also important to you, you look for flavors that are unusual but still healthy and delicious, and you are constantly on the lookout for the next food trend. When all is said and done, you are a bit of an intellect with a tendency to do a spot of soul searching from time to time. 


You're sophisticated and inquisitive with a real passion for art and culture. You pride yourself on being an early adopter of the latest music and films and always like to have a good book on the go. Your ability to bring together very diverse and even dissenting opinions is rooted in your appreciation for all points of view. You believe in immersing yourself in interesting experiences that make you look at people, places and opportunities from new angles. Being sensitive and creative you want to feel connected to the world around you and actively seek out opportunities to explore it. It's all about broadening your horizons and living life to the full. Anything else would not fulfill your curious nature. You'll love the list of The Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made, the Critics' Picks and Arts Beat.

How you like me now? ;) *shades on, hair flip*

_____________
¹ This is a Charlie reference.

Weggnesday

Hello, person. It's a Wednesday! Happy hump day! Tonight, I had class which was really nice and then, I went home and made myself something to eat because I was hungry. Any activity related to graduate school always leaves me starving because I am stricken with the disease of eating my feelings. Anyway, I'm sharing my own recipe for the egg salad dip thingy because I love eggs, it's what I had for tonight and this is fairly easy to make: 

What you need:

2 hard boiled eggs, mashed

A pinch of salt and pepper 

1 tbsp. mayonnaise (I actually use about half a tablespoon of mayo and just add more truffle oil)

1 tbsp. truffle oil (I get mine from Santi's)

chives (just a sprig, chopped, do not tear unlike a lazy girl I know i.e., me)

What you need to do:

Combine everything in a bowl. Sprinkle with chopped chives. Serve with soda crackers (you can also use it as a sandwich spread but I don't like bread so, there you have it. You may also eat it with rice but then that would make you a very gross and sort of disturbing person). Also, I think it tastes better if you chill it for a bit but that's just me.

Let me describe the taste of this small but powerful wonder: mashed hard-boiled eggs when mixed with mayo, turn into a creamy, rich, and tasty mess. Then, the truffle oil intensifies the flavor of the egg salad with its earthy, strong, woody undertones. It does not do much for the taste but it makes the salad smell so fragrant and heavenly. I ♥ truffles. Cap that off with the pungent bite of the fresh chives and the crisp, salty soda crackers and you have a light snack that's extremely satisfying. If you are still having trouble imagining how amazing this would taste, may I suggest a slice of bread and some Lily's peanut butter instead? I will also throw in a small prayer for your poor soul. 

While snacking (Oh God, I have an unrelenting penchant for snacking), I went on with my movie and TV viewage because I have decided that what I do not want to do today (Review of Related Literature for my research class), I will do tomorrow. I realize that I am a living challenge to Ben Franklin's secret to success because everything that I can do today, I put off for next week. I am never going to discover something as big as electricity. *sigh*

I watched Flipped, which is always a good movie to watch because it has so many winning points. (A few examples would be: the screenplay, Callan McAulliffe and the fabulous soundtrack--it has The Chiffons' One Fine Day, Big Bopper's Chantilly Lace and The Everly Brothers' Crying in The Rain. I mean, seriously? I would like to give each and every member of this ensemble a hug.)

In this scene, Julie Baker delivers fresh eggs to Bryce Loski. He does not know it yet but Julie Baker is the girl he should be with. At this point, let me send a shout out to all you Julie Bakers out there. Where my weirdos at? 

And then I continued my "Grey's Anatomy seasons 1 to 8: a revisit" marathon. I was so into this show from when I was fifteen up until college, I forgot how good it is. My favorite season is still the first one but it's raining babies in season 8 and my ovaries are exploding in approval :

McDreamy and Zola/McSteamy and Sofia. Surgeons make the sexiest dads but the cutest baby award goes to baby Sofia. "Oh my god, she's crack baby!" Have you guys seen the episode where she rolls over and falls off a couch? Cutest. Ever. That does not sound right (I am mean but not to babies) but you just have to watch it. 

All in all, it was a great way to end a Wednesday. I am incredibly behind with what I need to write for school but oh well, tomorrow is another day. 

44 Bookers in 25 Words Each

The Man Booker Prize, for the best novel published in the past year by a citizen of a country in the British Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland, is one of the most prestigious literary accolades given for a single work of fiction in the English-speaking world. In light of the October 18th announcement of the 2011 prize, the Review's editors asked Harold Augenbraum, Executive Director of the National Book Foundation, presenter of the U.S. National Book Awards, to provide a bite-sized "take" on each Booker or Man Booker recipient (its sponsorship changed in the 1990s). He responded with precisely 25 words on each and every winner.


1969 -- Something to Answer For by P. H. Newby -- Who? Shockingly good. Graham Greene crossed with Steve Erickson: Personal and political melt into a man without memory. Appropriate that the Booker was a newbie.


1970 -- The Elected Member by Bernice Rubens -- Abraham and Sarah raise a different sort of dysfunctional brood. This is Sholem Aleichem's "Tevya and His Daughters" made into a wonderfully contemporary, psychological novel.


1971 -- In a Free State by V. S. Naipaul -- No one writes better about how oppression oppresses everyone it touches, including the oppressor. The book's last section is subtly complex and brilliantly nuanced. Marvelous.


1972 -- G. by John Berger -- Truly a reader's book, with hints of Marx and Stendhal and Robbe-Grillet hiding within. No one mixes reason and art like Berger, every sentence intriguing.


1973 -- The Siege of Krishnapur by J. G. Farrell -- Start with a measure of stupid British commercial imperialism, add spoonfuls of ironic heroism, Anglican bible-thumping, and Victorian sexual naiveté. A real romance of cynicism.

1974 (shared) -- The Conservationist by Nadine Gordimer -- Everyone talks about Gordimer and race in South Africa, but she's an incomparable artist with words, on every page a gem worth repeating to friends.


1974 (shared) -- Holiday by Stanley Middleton -- Middleton shows consummate craft in an exploration of marriage told in flashback. So many Bookers take place near water; it should be the (Sea)Man Booker.

1975 -- Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala -- Hard to believe that this book was written by a German-Jewish woman from Britain. A stingingly vivid embedding of alienation in an alienating country.


1976 -- Saville by David Storey -- I love British class-accent-based coming-of-age novels that civilly depict uncivilized behavior. Sons and Lovers without the paternal abuse and Lawrence's overbearing ideology, an immerging story.


1977 -- Staying On by Paul Scott -- This belongs to the "What were we thinking?" School of British Literature. It's not post-colonial, it's post-purpose. Read it with Scott's Raj Quartet: They intersect.

1978 -- The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch -- Insightful story of a retired man who pretends that forty years of an unfulfilled life do not exist. Intellectually intriguing and emotionally compelling: A masterpiece.


1979 -- Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald -- Creeps up on you, like the tide, with great story rhythms. Chock-full of pathos, few sentences stand out, but the whole makes up for it.


1980 -- Rites of Passage by William Golding -- When historical fiction overlays contemporary sensibilities onto the past instead of trying to approximate that era's sensibilities (see The French Lieutenant's Woman), a corker results

1981 -- Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie -- Winner of the Booker of Bookers (twenty-fifth and fortieth anniversaries). Not only one of the best but most representative of what the Bookers look for.


1982 -- Schindler's List (published in the U.K. asSchindler's Ark) by Thomas Keneally -- Novel? History? Doesn't matter. Keneally smartly situates victims and survivors at the center. Powerful reminder of when compassion battles brutality…and wins…but only sometimes.


1983 -- Life & Times of Michael K by J. M. Coetzee -- It may be a cliché, but this book is like a traffic accident observed in slow motion. You grimace constantly but you can't look away.


1984 -- Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner -- As languidly sensual as the English get (again with the water!). In America they would call this a "snowbound" book, a modern classic of regret.


1985 -- The Bone People by Keri Hulme -- Reads like it was tapped out on a manual typewriter in a wilderness shack by a first-timer. Visceral and affecting. Among the Bookers, sui generis.


1986 -- The Old Devils by Kingsley Amis -- Codgers and regrets go together like horses and carriages. Not Amis's best, but it's a cohesive portrait of aging curmudgeons by the quintessential aging curmudgeon.


1987 -- Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively -- The most attractive, unrepentant female curmudgeon ever, passionate sex, intellectually exciting, and socially upending. My first Fitzgerald: couldn't put it down, will read it again.
1988 -- Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey -- Carey specializes in extraordinary people in uncivilized environments. His language grows more ambitious with each book, with greater risks and more accomplishment. Read 'em all


1989 -- The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro -- I have read three perfect novels in my life, and this is one of them. The British class system as realism, symbolism, and metaphor. Brilliant.


1990 -- Possession by A. S. Byatt -- One hopes that literary prizes get it right sometimes. This is one of those times. Read slowly and carefully, and don't skip over the poetry.


1991 -- The Famished Road by Ben Okri -- Raises the coming-of-age novel to the thrill of epic, candidate for the Great Nigerian Novel. Okri is a worthy successor to Achebe, predecessor to Adichie.


1992 (shared) -- Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth -- A post-swashbuckling saga of corrupt antiheroes on the Main, highly structured and powerfully languaged, a call-and-response plotting of moral relativism before the British abolition of slavery's Triangle Trade.


1992 (shared) -- The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje -- The love stories twist you in knots while the beauty of Ondaatje's language creates an internal landscape to match the sublime vastness of the desert.


1993 -- Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle -- The title explains much of it. A kid's romp in the not-quite-mean streets, and one of the best evocations of the "loomingness" of childhood.


1994 -- How Late It Was, How Late by James Kelman -- Who hasn't awakened in an alley missing his shoes? Portrait of the downsliding of a soon-to-be down-and-out, the prose style mirrors the story's blithery content.

1995 -- The Ghost Road by Pat Barker -- One of the best "if war is hell then the First World War is heller" subgenre books of political conflict writing. Like someone's dark soul imprinted.


1996 -- Last Orders by Graham Swift -- A really affecting novel of community and 
regret, though since The Big Lebowski no one can throw a crematee into the sea without comic relief.


1997 -- The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy -- One of those books that people say you should read because of its themes; instead, read it (aloud) for the sheer pleasure of hearing words


1998 -- Amsterdam by Ian McEwan -- McEwan is Britain's big-concept, zeitgeist writer, whose personal stories engage with political ideas. Always intelligent and readable, Amsterdam's his take on death and dying.


1999 -- Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee -- Coetzee could win the Man Booker with every book. A man steadily loses control; in the face of gathering darkness, his social presence turns translucent.

2000 -- The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood -- Character-driven and illusive, the dissatisfactions of women intertwine in the fictions they tell themselves and one another through the generations. Kate Chopin meets Robertson Davies.


2001 -- True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey -- For Americans, a revelation that other places had legendary bandits (Robin Hood? Joaquin Murrieta?). Carey's fabulous style creates a link between language and life story.


2002 -- Life of Pi by Yann Martell -- The fable that made the Booker fabulous, mingling Robinson Crusoe, Steinbeck's story "Lifeboat," Animal Planet, and Khalil Gibran. Don't believe the overhype: It reads good.


2003 -- Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre -- The least British British novel I've ever read. Absorbing, more Denis Johnson than Samuel Johnson, with gangly prose as if written by a stringy convict.


2004 -- The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst -- Class and sex, sex and class. It beautifully brings out the 
status of gay men as "ethnics," in an otherwise traditional British tale of "passing."

2005 -- The Sea by John Banville -- Another Booker about old men and the sea (see Murdoch, 1978). Few novelists write more beautiful prose than Banville…and most of them are dead.


2006 -- The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai -- It's hard not to admire this book. A big, heart-rending story of Indians who leave and Indians who stay, and those who came and went.


2007 -- The Gathering by Anne Enright -- Very earnest story of sex, death, family, and middle-age desire. The sentences are so astoundingly ambitious that their risk-taking beauty can keep you from sobbing.


2008 -- The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga -- Surprisingly good, because some literary pundits badmouthed it for lack of complexity. The best of what happens when a journalist writes a socially relevant novel.

2009 -- Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel -- English history is a fetish for the Brits, like Star Wars for the Yanks: They love to parade in costumes and jostle with their (anti)heroes.


2010 -- The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson -- We've been waiting 800 years for the British Messiah, but instead of a messiah we get messhugah. Also read Kalooki Nights. It's even better.

This piece is by Harold Augenbraum. He is the Executive Director of the National Book Foundation, presenter of the U.S. National Book Awards. Asked what his favorite Booker Winners and Short List selections have been over the past 42 years, he responded, "The Sea, The Sea; The Sea; and C."