You will read over a hundred books in seven months as a Booker Prize judge. How are you approaching this unique challenge, and what are your tips for people who want to find more time for reading but may struggle to fit it around their busy schedules? 

I’m being strict with myself, in that I don’t go back over something I’ve just read, a paragraph or a burst of dialogue, as I would often have done, pre-Booker. I don’t flick back to remind myself of character names, or places, or dates. I go straight ahead; if I’m a bit confused, it’s the writer’s problem, not mine. I start reading at about 6am and, basically, keep going all day. I read eating, queueing, waiting for buses, in a chair in a corner of my kitchen, in pubs and cafes and – once – at the back of a church at a funeral. (It’s what he would have wanted.) 

Reading is a mostly solitary experience, but judging is a shared one. How does discussing a book with other people change the reading experience?

At one level, there’s no difference; I read the book, alone, before I discuss it with the other judges. But, actually, it is different, because I’m anticipating the discussion as I read; I’m taking notes; I’m reminding myself of what I liked, or didn’t like, about the books, before each meeting. I left school in 1976, so it’s very nearly 50 years since I did homework, and starting each book, taking the early notes, feels a bit like homework – although my fellow judges in no way remind me of the Christian Brothers. Interestingly, perhaps, when I’m really enjoying a book, I stop taking notes.   

Who, living or dead, would be in your dream book club and why? What would you read and where would you meet?   

Membership of my club, the Anything-But-Fiction Club, is open to anyone who wants to come along to the Windjammer, a pub near the River Liffey – an early house – at 7.30am, on the first Monday of the month. Regular attendees include Phyllis Diller, Jack Charlton, Cab Calloway, Josephine Bonaparte, Aretha Franklin and Diego Maradona – a quiet group of people. Scarlett O’Hara was a member but we threw her out when we discovered she was fictional. There are only two rules: no fiction allowed, and don’t read the book until after the meeting.  

What book made you fall in love with reading as a child? How and why did it capture your imagination?  

I think it was Just William, by Richmal Crompton. I remember being very excited as I read; I remember being delighted, and laughing. All of the adults in the book were eejits and William and his gang, the Outlaws, got away with everything they did. William’s boredom was funny and perfectly understandable; the grown-up rules were often ridiculous. Even his dog, Jumble, was perfect – because he was just a dog. There was nothing cartoonish about Jumble, or anything else in the book. It was real life – and it was my life, somehow.   

What’s your all-time favourite Booker-nominated book and what’s so special about it? Who would you recommend it to? 

I had a quick look at the Booker-nominated lists and decided almost immediately that I lacked the courage or was much too wise to select an all-time favourite. (Some of those writers are still alive!) But I do love Shuggie Bain. The way Douglas Stuart manages to get brutality and tenderness to dance with each other is marvellous. The characters, the dialogue – how Stuart lets the reader see where his people come from and why they say and do the things they say and do, how they love and eat and cope and don’t. And Shuggie, himself – I felt I knew him, and I’d known and loved him all my life.