The Guardian's Blog, page 116
July 22, 2014
Man Booker prize 2014 bingo: who will make the cut?
Weve ventured a few guesses as to who will make the Man Booker prize longlist but which books do you expect to see on it? And how many of them will be American?
Its that time of year again: the Man Booker judges are preparing to unveil the longlist for one of the worlds leading literary awards, at noon (UK time). And its a perennial pleasure to predict which of the novels published in the previous year will make it into the Man Booker dozen which could add up to as many as 13 titles.
Stuart Kelly, one of last years judges, confessed on the books blog that any predictions I make will most likely be wrong. Even before I was a judge in 2013, I realised that one should probably judge the judges, not the novels, if one were planning a trip to the turf accountants. Nevertheless, he highlighted some of the books we know will be considered Ian McEwans The Children Act, Will Selfs Shark, David Mitchells The Bone Clocks, Nicola Barkers In The Approaches, Ali Smiths How To Be Both, Alan Warners Their Lips Talk Of Mischief - as well as a couple whose glowing review coverage makes them likely contenders, Philip Henshers The Emperor Waltz and Neel Mukherjees The Lives of Others.
5 days to go. Which books will join the ranks of previous Man Booker longlisted novels? #ManBooker2014 http://t.co/T392NQp1Db
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The Man Booker prize 2014: predictions for the longlist
Any predictions I make about this year's Man Booker prize longlist, which is announced on Wednesday, will most likely be wrong. Even before I was a judge in 2013, I realised that one should probably judge the judges, not the novels, if one were planning a trip to the turf accountant's. That explained my singular failure to predict a winner my intellectual bitcoins were on Will Self not Hilary Mantel in 2012, Tom McCarthy not Howard Jacobson in 2010, and indeed, had I been alive in 1969 for the first Booker, I'd have gone for Muriel Spark, GM Williams, Iris Murdoch or Nicholas Mosley over PH Newby. The rare year when the book I thought should win did win Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries - was when I was a judge. It's especially difficult to cast the runes this year, as The Rules Have Changed, which is usually translated into The Americans Are Coming, usually with an exclamation mark. It's not only a wider field for the judges to choose from, but the judging panel has been increased to six (a mistake in my view, giving a casting vote to the chair), and the number of books publishers can submit has been altered to a sliding scale, dependent on their previous success at what the 2011 winner Julian Barnes once called "posh bingo".
That said, there are some things we do know. Previous winners get a free pass to the judges' attention so Ian McEwan's The Children Act and Howard Jacobson's J will both have been considered. Given McEwan's novel is about a female judge dealing with a religious young man who wants to opt out of life-saving medical treatment, it will perhaps strike a chord with the chair, the vocal atheist and philosopher, AC Grayling. Jacobson's novel is set in the future, where certain words are self-censored: quite a change from his earlier comedic work, and speculative fiction doesn't have the best track record at the Man Booker. I've read neither book, but, on their past performances, would happily see neither on the longlist.
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A book for the beach: The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
If, having shimmied your bottom to exactly the right indentation in the sand for maximum comfort, you're going to hold a book up to the sun, let its world be entirely incongruous, a pleasing contrast to its holiday context. Such was my thinking when, in the quiet glaze of the Sicilian afternoon heat, the company of The Moonstone seemed the obvious choice.
Published, in serial instalments, in 1868 and described by TS Eliot as "the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels", the narrative follows the disappearance and eventual recovery of a priceless stone given to Rachel Verinder on the evening of her 18th birthday.
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July 21, 2014
Tips, links and suggestions: What are you reading this week?
Your space to discuss the books you are reading and what you think of them
Welcome to this week's blog. Here's a roundup of your comments and photos from last week.
TreesAreGood shared:
Reading American Pastoral, the Philip Roth that won the Pulitzer. Realised I had never read him and thought I probably should (especially after his Man Booker International win a few years ago). It is incredibly well written, but I can't quite engage myself in it. There is a certain type of novel delving into the life of American male from the north-eastern corner that is a little grating, I think such great writing and so little innovation. Some of the Pulitzer winners and finalists fit into this category too (The Corrections, even The Goldfinch).
I played the game here recently, naming five books on my TBR list and getting advice about where to start. The consensus was Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez. I have to admit to having read this novel a long long time ago and not really understanding most of it. This time through I loved it, and for anyone who has struggled with it, perhaps the time is not right yet. This book is a meditation on love, ageing, death and time. Márquez certainly takes the reader on a roller coaster ride through the protagonist Florentino Ariza's sexual adventures, and a moving account of how a marriage not founded on love might survive, which is the marriage of Florentino's true love Fermina Daza.
Love in old age is described with humour and tenderness and when the guy gets his girl late in both their lives Márquez writes with great insight and humour. In case I haven't made it clear, this book made me laugh out loud so many times. I am sure that a feminist reading of this novel would find a lot to object to, especially one part which would now be seen as sexual grooming. I read that, acknowledged my unease and read on, because the outcome of that particular adventure is shocking and moving. Yes the book is slow, yes, it repeats itself, but the setting, the characters and the denouement make this one of my best reads so far this year.
Idly picked Never Mind out of my TBR pile where its been languishing for years. Been idling ever since - no work, housework, socialising, sleeping or showering until Ive finished them all. Still waiting on At Last from the library, but so far am blown away by each one.
Remarkable series. Each one equally brilliant and surprisingly different. Caustic, sceptical, observant, moving yet clinically unsentimental. St. Aubyn does my favourite thing tricks me into laughing loudly and inappropriately at terrible thoughts, words, deeds & characters.
I lost a bet with my housemate and he handed me this as a forfeit. Luckily it's fantastic!
Sent via GuardianWitness
By lucslade
14 July 2014, 17:05
Very cautious about needing just the right read while I am recovering from a breakdown, I thought I would give The Sound of Things Falling by Juan Gabriel Vasquez a chance and so far I have found that the writing has such a gripping intimacy and intensity that I can barely put it down. Although the narrator is intentionally capturing this memoir of a particular event in his past for his the reader, he could just as easily be sitting across the table in a dusty cafe or smoking bar and unfolding the tale to you face to face. Just wonderful.
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The 10 best books of the year (so far)
We recently invited you to tell us what your favourite book of the year (so far) was. The nominations were interesting and not what we might have expected. There seems to be quite a strong consensus around certain titles, as big contenders like The Silkworm got many of the votes but there were also a few surprises.
Here is a selection of your nominations and opinions, together with links to the verdicts from the Guardian's reviewers. Is your favourite title of the first six months of 2014 on this list? Let us know how you would have voted (or how you did) in the comment thread below.
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A book for the beach: The Thought Gang by Tibor Fischer
I am not an ideal beach reader. Bed, bus, bath, yes; but I like the sea almost too much to be able to concentrate on anything else in its vicinity. I tend to sit next to books on beaches, gawping at the horizon.
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July 20, 2014
A book for the beach: The City And The City by China Miéville
The scenario of China Miéville's The City and The City reveals itself like an armchair traveller's road trip through eastern Europe. There's the once beautiful but dishevelled city of Besel, reminiscent of a Krakow that never recovered. Then there's the modernised Ul Qoma, a hub of new investments and growth that brings to mind a post-reunification Berlin.
These two cities occupy the same geographical space, divided not by walls, but by Miéville's genius for the fantastic. Certain areas belong to Besel, others to Ul Qoma, while some are crosshatched between the two. Citizens from one city learn from birth to "unsee" the citizens, vehicles, buildings of the other. Any crossing of these boundaries invokes a shadowy organisation called Breach, which exists to police the separation.
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July 19, 2014
A book for the beach: The Turning by Tim Winton
I found Tim Winton's book, The Turning, in a small hotel in Italy and it became my siesta-time reading for the next few days. Its 17 short chapters interweave the lives of some of the inhabitants of a small coastal fishing town in Western Australia.
It is not always a comforting book to read but the opening chapter dropped me straight back into my teenage son's surfing world. The language of this first story is vivid surfing vernacular, which Winton knows well, since he grew up with it, and I did wonder how the first owner of this book (clearly bought in an Italian bookshop) would have coped with it if they had never heard it before. The narrator and his mate, Biggie, are in that post school-leaving limbo, itching to get on with life but uncertain of what they want. They work a "crappy Saturday job" at the local meat works where they pack bloody meat into boxes for "cray bait", and they are saving up for a V8 Sandman with a "filthy great mattress in the back": a legendary "chick-magnet".
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July 18, 2014
The tales that could have been tweeted
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Books on holidays: What are you reading this summer?
Our writers are revealing their favourite reads to stretch out in the sun with and we want to see, and hear about, yours. What books are you packing? Where are you taking them? And while youre at it, what are your favourite reading memories from summers past?
From the grey (OK, only some days), air-conditioned comfort of Guardian Towers, we want to hear about your summer reading list and see it, in its holiday context. Perhaps you're packing some of the best holiday reads of the year as recommended by top authors? Or perhaps you're taking this as a chance to catch up on your piles of "to be read" books.
Weve seen your shelfies, and now were after your sand-filled pages and your travelling books in front of foreign cityscapes, jungles, mountains, nearby beaches or wherever your summer is taking you, even if it's just the tube.
I was one of those kids who had to be kicked out of the door to enjoy the sun and play with friends, as I would much rather be curled up with a good book. However, the Scottish weather usually ended up on my side and I had many a day indoors as the rain battered the windows. And back then it was Nancy Drew, Enid Blyton, Goosebumps, Beverly Cleary, so many different books.
I read Love in the Time of Cholera during a holiday in Antigua many years ago, especially during torrential downpours, and the experience has never left me. If you have the opportunity to start it during a summer rain storm, preferably with doors open (I'm assuming you'd be inside somewhere), I'd really recommend it!
Tom Jones, I read on the beach in Spain on holiday, and it always reminds me of sun and sand. It helps that my copy is smeared with suncream. I memorised big chunks of John Donne's poetry on my tea breaks whilst working in a fish factory, and can still smell the smoked salmon when I think of him. I read Marlowe's complete plays in between serving pints in a pub one summer. The essays of Addison and Steele are inextricably linked to interrailing around Eastern Europe. etc.
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