Finally I can start gossiping about the Booker again!

Oh man, sorry for the sporadic posting folks. It’s been a long month. I promise a real post is in the works!

For now, in case you haven’t heard, The Booker Long List:

• The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt
• Summertime by J.M. Coetzee
• The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds
• How to Paint a Dead Man by Sarah Hall
• The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey
• Me Cheeta by James Lever
• Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
• The Glass Room by Simon Mawer
• Not Untrue & Not Unkind by Ed O’Loughlin
• Heliopolis by James Scudamore
• Brooklyn by Colm Toibin
• Love and Summer by William Trevor
• The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

Who’s up for a rousing game of “find the Canadian?” No, it’s not Margaret Atwood. The book doesn’t even have the word “wilderness” in the title! Trickier than you thought, eh?

Reading The Little Stranger was like the highlight of my year, so that’s who I’m rooting for.

Which book’s got your vote?

 

Playoffs!

Finally, a Stanley Cup for geeks:

The Man Booker Prize for Fiction announced today a one-off award – The Best of the Booker – to celebrate the prestigious literary prize’s 40th anniversary. The Best of the Booker will honour the best overall novel to have won the prize since it was first awarded on 22 April 1969. 41 novels will be eligible for the award as there were two winners in both 1974 and in 1992.

This poses all sorts of questions in my head- do you favour well-written books over books with good stories? Will they avoid picking authors who have won more than once? Who would win in a book-off, Peter Carey or Ian McEwan? Better yet- Margaret Atwood or A.S. Byatt? I don’t envy these judges. I guess I don’t have to worry about it either, as six finalist books are chosen by three judges, who then leave it up to the well-balanced and always reliable people of the internet. Let’s just hope it won’t be the Facebook Wishlist all over again. We all know how evangelical those Salman Rushdie fans can be.

Booksellers are predicting the Life of Pi, but I think that’s too recent and readers got a little sick of it during its year of glory; especially if they happened to be working in a bookstore at the time. *ahem* Anyway, my vote’s on J.M. Coetzee with his wacky cult following, or perhaps Iris Murdoch. But in my heart it will always be Maggie.