The longlist for the Booker prize was announced yesterday and already some people are in a tizzy over authors left off the list. The favorites so far are David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas (yay!) and Allan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty. Frankly, I am not sure if the Booker carries as much weight as it once did. There are so many literary prizes out there and last year’s winner DBC Pierre’s Vernon God Little was sort of shocking. Are they turning into the Oscar’s, where it is less the movie movie, more of who the actor is and have they won before or been slighted in previous years, i.e. Ron Howard or Denzel Washington? We shall see I guess when the shortlist is announced on the September 21st and the winner on October 19th.
(Thanks to Bookslut for the links!)
Bookdwarf
Come fall into a book hole!
Bookdwarf 
Now that there is a longlist, the Booker matters more to me than it ever did. The day the list is announced is my favorite day of the year. I always order some of the books. And I always discover new writers through the list. I’d never heard of Gerard Woodward before but soon will have two of his books.
And I ordered Snowleg. And I’m looking at this Matt Thorne fellow. And I’ll try some of the South African themed/related titles. And I’ve been reading about Cloud Atlas for months and will now (partly because of the list, partly because of your praise of it, and partly beacuse I can get it in paperback) read it. And the more controversy about who was left off the list, the better. I love reading about that stuff. I hate seeing gossip about J-Lo, the Olsen girls, Britney, Paris, and their ilk in People but I love this who-got-left-off-the-list gossip.
Oh, and like the Super Bowl, the winner rarely matters to me. Its the run up to the big award that’s the fun part. (Unless I have a nice 1st edition of the winning book.)
Personally, I can’t believe Jonathan Coe and Justin Cartwright didn’t make the longlist. I don’t have my copies of their new books yet but it just feels wrong.
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