The 2008 Man-Booker Prize Longlist

The longlist for the 2008 Man-Booker Prize has been announced. The full list is given below.

Title	Author
The White Tiger	Aravind Adiga
Girl in a Blue Dress	Gaynor Arnold
The Secret Scripture	Sebastian Barry
From A to X	John Berger
The Lost Dog	Michelle de Kretser
Sea of Poppies	Amitav Ghosh
The Clothes on their Backs	Linda Grant
A Case of Exploding Mangoes	Mohammed Hanif
The Northern Clemency	Philip Hensher
Netherland	Joseph O'Neill
The Enchantress of Florence	Salman Rushdie
Child 44	Tom Rob Smith
A Fraction of the Whole	Steve Toltz

I hate to admit it, but I only recognize one entry in this year's long list, and that is Salman Rushdie's The Enchantress of Florence. The other authors and books are unknown to me. This is a bit embarrassing, but in my defense I have not had a lot of time to read over the past year, and my local library does not carry most of these titles. Not having a lot of time to read is not a good excuse. The reality is that when I have sat down to read books I have tended to read pulp rubbish like Sandworms of Dune (yes, I am a Dune fan) or non-fiction. In fact, most of my recent reading has been non-fiction. I certainly could have made more of an effort to keep up with the literary world. The other reason, the lack of these titles in my local library, is hard to overcome. I get most of my reading material from my town's public library. It is cheap, it supports public libraries, and I usually have a good selection of books to choose from. The fact that they only carry five of the thirteen Man-Booker nominees is disturbing, but given that the Man-Booker prize is for fiction by a Commonwealth author, not a US author, that is not too surprising.

So, my goal for the next month is to plough through as many of the five titles that are in my local library as I can in the next month. I expect to get through two or three by the time that the short list is released. The short list will be announced on 9 September and the winner will be announced on 14 October.

Anne Enright wins the Booker Prize

The 2007 Man Booker prize was announced a couple of hours ago, and the winner was Ann Enright for her novel The Gathering. I admit that I have never heard of Anne Enright before she was put on the Booker long list a couple of months ago. Sadly, our local library does not have any of her books, which is disappointing. It says something about a library's acquisition policy when the library does not have books by the person who wins the Booker prize. Still, this is the US, where Tom Clancy's books are considered high art. So now it is time to make a trip to the book store and buy The Gathering. Since there are no bookstores near where I live (the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC are a complete wasteland in many ways) I will probably end up buying it off Amazon.com.

Proust and the Squid

It has been a slow week for squid news, so I thought that I would read something that is only tangentially related to cephalopods. The question this week is about reading. Proust and the Squid: the Story and Science of the Reading Brain by Maryanne Wolf examines the human tendency to read, and comes to some interesting conclusions. The basic argument of the book is that reading is not natural, and thus must be encouraged. With our society turning more and more digital, Wolf argues, reading becomes less and less important. Since reading is not instinctive our brains must rewire themselves to allow us to understand the printed word. It is an interesting book, although it is difficult to read, which struck me as a bit ironic. Personally, I am not worried that people are losing the ability to read. We will always need the printed word to tell us what is on tv.

The 2007 Booker Prize Short List

Well, it has been a while since I have blogged anything. Life has been busy, work has been hectic, and I have been enjoying the last days of Summer here in Maryland. The Summer weather here is too hot and too humid, but in September things cool down a bit and we generally have a few weeks of truly pleasant temperatures. It was actually nice to walk to work this morning, and it has been nice to spend an evening without the drone of the air conditioner in the background.

As well as bringing cooler weather September brings the short list for the Man Booker prize. Here it is.

• Darkmans by Nicola Barker
• The Gathering by Anne Enright
• The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
• Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
• On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
• Animal's People by Indra Sinha

I have read The Reluctant Fundamentalist and On Chesil Beach, but the local library system does not have any of the other shortlisted books, and I am too cheap to buy them. Perhaps I will break down and buy Animal's People this weekend, if I make it to a bookstore.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is one of the best books that I have read in quite a while. It is the story of a young Pakistani man in the US before, during, and after the terrorist attacks of 11 Sep 2001. The book tells of how a person who genuinely liked America slowly became radicalized. The story is written from an interesting point of view that could easily have become tedious, but Mohsin Hamid pulls it off well. I highly recommend reading this book. It is short, thought-provoking, and a very strong candidate for winning this year.

On Chesil Beach is Ian McEwan's contribution to literature for 2007, and I was very disappointed with it. The nomination was controversial since the book is less than 200 pages long and thus technically a novella, not a novel. However, I do not think much of this objection. A book should be long enough to tell the story, and no longer. If On Chesil Beach weighs in a few pages short of being a formal novel then I do not think that that should be held against it. My complaint with On Chesil Beach is that the story did not grab me. It felt like a gimmick that had been dragged out far too long. The book should have been a short story. By about fifty pages in I was bored with the characters and their dilemma. It was obvious what was going to happen, and I spent the last three quarters of the book waiting for the punch line. I do not think that this book belongs on the short list.

2007 Man Booker Prize Longlist

The longlist for the 2007 Man Booker Prize has been released. Here it is.

• Darkmans by Nicola Barker
• Self Help by Edward Docx
• The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng
• The Gathering by Anne Enright
• The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
• The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies
• Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
• Gifted by Nikita Lalwani
• On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
• What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn
• Consolation by Michael Redhill
• Animal's People by Indra Sinha
• Winnie & Wolf by A N Wilson

Nothing really jumps out at me on this list. There is the inevitable contribution from Ian McEwan. He seems to get nominated every year, even though he is a bit of an overrated author. Atonement was a good book, but most of his other recent efforts have been average. I have not read On Chesil Beach yet, so I will reserve judgement on whether or not Mr McEwan deserves his nomination this year.

Stay tuned to this space for reviews of the longlist books as I read them. Given my various Summer commitments I expect to make it through one or two of the nominees...