2020 Booker Prize Speculation

[Ang]

I just looked up the new Mantel - 912 pages!!! No, thank you.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer]

Yes please!

[MisterHobgoblin]

I wouldn't read it even if it were 9.12 pages.

[Trevor]

Ha!

[Paul]

912 pages? Seriously? A certain other Booker book has killed my enthusiasm for long book stone dead. I sense another skim read beckoning.

I really do think any author writing a novel over 500 pages should be obliged to explain why they consider their demand on a reader’s time is sufficiently important to essentially stop them reading another book (or several other books when it is 900 pages).

[MisterHobgoblin]

Here are some books I will read before I read The Boredom and The Light:

Digital Fortress – Dan Brown
Scarlet Feather – Maeve Binchy
Vampire Academy – Richelle Mead
Fifty Shades of Grey – EL James
Twilight – Stephanie Meyer
Water Inc – Varda Burstyn (reread)

[Paul]

And The Winds of Winter - George Martin?

[WndyJW]

Some of my favorite books have been long books. I’d rather read a good book that’s a bit too long because the author had so much to say, than a good book that’s a bit too short and not all that it could be because the writer worried about going on too much. Midnight’s Children had sections I thought could be trimmed, but I loved it. I’ve read many books where it was clear the author had a good idea, but didn’t do all that they could with it. The Underground Railroad is one, Pure is another that comes to mind.

Anyway, most of us are fairly fast readers. It can be read in a week reading 3 hours a day.

I realize I’m defending Hilary Mantel’s 912 page book after failing 3 times to get past Cardinal Wolsey being installed in his new digs in the first, shorter start to the trilogy.

[MisterHobgoblin]

Paul wrote: "And The Winds of Winter - George Martin?"

Yep. That one too.

[Neil]

At least there is no need to re-read the first two to remind yourself of the plot.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer]

Not sure I agree really Neil. Mantel has a different take on the events to the traditional historical view

If I only read four books for the rest of the year it would be these three books and a recent biography of Cromwell.

[Antonomasia, Admin only]

Thanks, you have just inadvertantly given me a good idea for using up an Audible credit, as I could soon end up with too many. (I keep pausing it for 3 months so I can catch up eventually, but new ones come along too quickly sometimes.)

Thomas Cromwell was my least-favourite topic in all the 16th century history I studied multiple times for multiple courses, yet this is also exactly the sort of familiar topic I use audio for. Several audios to finish yet before I start a new one, but this would be a book worth keeping on hand even if I don't get to it for months.
---
Hmmm, unfortunately the narrators of the two available are rather fast in the sample and might be too fast for me. I will have to give the samples several listens before deciding.

[Paul]

I normally get frustrated with how slow most narrators are of audiobooks - for a 900 page book a normal narrating speed is going to take ages - Wolf Hall is 559 pages but 23 hours on audio.

I sometimes speed them up but it is like listening to someone on helium.

I have only found they work where the book needs to be vocalised -Girl is a Half Formed Thing for example.

Or for family car journeys and the latest from the UK's best selling author David Walliams.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer]

I am predicting “The Accomplice” by Joseph Kanon to make the longlist.

[Paul]

On the ground it was book I referred to below that Lee Child nominated as his fiction book of the year?

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer]

Yes.

There may be some more clues here

https://www.waterstones.com/blog/what...

https://blog.whsmith.co.uk/rjsu18-lee...

https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/20...

[Maddie]

No offense... but if I have to read another 'Snap'-like book because of Lee Child... I will riot.

[Tracy]

Ugh.
At least we can be fairly sure that it won’t be a Mantel three-peat.

[WndyJW]

MisterHobgoblin, I was a little worried you were dealing with bushfires. Glad to see you’re okay (even though you’re saying mean things about Hilary Mantel.)

I had to look up Lee Childs to see if there were two authors with that name. He’s probably a very good writer, but I don’t think of crime fiction when I think of the Booker, of course writing crime fiction doesn’t preclude being a good judge of literary fiction.

[Ella]

Antonomasia wrote: " ... given me a good idea for using up an Audible credit, as I could soon end up with too many. (I keep pausing it for 3 months so I can catch up eventually, but new ones come along too quickly sometimes.)"

I actually am about to give up my audible subscription b/c 1) amazon, of course, but also I keep forgetting to use my credits then I lose them. I am going to use them for something like great courses or some big compendium of adventure stories or something, maybe. Someone told me they don't take them away if you buy by the year, but that would give me an enormous amount of credits... I really do wish I could gift credits to people other than those who have never tried audible (those kinds of people are very hard to find.)

[Paul]

Gumble's Yard wrote: "Yes.

There may be some more clues here

https://www.penguin.co.uk..."

Even worse - he has dissed Gumble's favourite (certainly most read) author of all time, Alistair McLean.

[Paul]

In two of the articles he mentions Harlan Coben - I won one of his books once and make the mistake of reading it, and it was one of the most dreadful things I've ever read. It didn't even seem to work on its own terms as it subverted the Miss Marple style 'underestimated detective' genre, by having the main character be athletic, handsome, very rich, an expert computer hacker and with lots of friends with additional expertise, making solving crimes rather easy At one point, when he couldn't prove the suspect had done it, he simply got a friend to torture the villain in to a confession.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer]

His issue with MacLean is effectively that his writing technique is too complicated and tricksy. Which I have to say is the first time I have ever heard him criticised that way. It’s like if someone criticised Mantel for writing novels which are too short with terse narrative.

And on that topic I do have a concern for Mantel as Child’s wife of 40+ years is a historian

“For her, anything beyond about 1485, Henry VII, is dangerously modern, practically journalism.”

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer]

Reading Lee Child’s comments on literary authors (most famously his comment to David Sexton in the Evening Standard that

‘he could write one of their novels in three weeks and “sell 3,000 copies or whatever”, whereas they could never do the reverse and write successful genre fiction like his.’

I am wondering if the judging panel might break a convention and nominate one of their own.

A clue might be here

https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...

[Antonomasia, Admin only]

[removed paragraphs about rules, posted in wrong thread]

“For her, anything beyond about 1485, Henry VII, is dangerously modern, practically journalism.”
:D I like her.

[Antonomasia, Admin only]

Has he ever explained why the pseudonym? Jim Grant is a perfectly good name for a thriller writer and would fit equally well in big letters on the covers. I could more understand making the change the other way round.

[MisterHobgoblin]

Antonomasia wrote: "Has he ever explained why the pseudonym?"

Apparently he chose his pen name because it was more memorable and came earlier in the alphabet. (https://www.theguardian.com/books/200...).

I suspect it may also have been because he expected to work in a salaried job again and sometimes employers might see writing thrillers as a conflict of interest.

[Antonomasia, Admin only]

Cheers. Interesting. I guess as a Grant he'd have already noticed some benefits from having a name near-ish the start of the alphabet and wanted to increase those.

I often used to browse bookshop and library shelves in alphabetical order. If someone is doing that but stops once they find a book that interests them (I almost never did), then you are onto something with a name near the start of the alphabet. Maybe if it's *too* early, like A or B, this kind of browser will keep looking for a little while anyway.

[MisterHobgoblin]

I also browse in alphabetical order but for some reason I always seem to skip the As and Bs.

[Hugh, Active moderator]

I browse in alphabetical order, but sometimes work backwards, and may start somewhere in the middle if I am looking for something specific. In bookshops it is often a distinctive spine design that catches the eye...

[Robert]

I start from A and work my way to Z

I blame my inner librarian

[Antonomasia, Admin only]

Do you find that you get bored by it now?
I have noticed that since I started using GR heavily, I see the names of books and authors so much more more often, and know more about them, so it is quite monotonous looking at shelves like that, especially of fiction. The only value seems to be in curiosity about what the place thinks it's worth stocking, and even then I tend to skim and skip in a way I never would have once. (If it's something I don't read about often, and which have more variation in appearance, like cookery books, that is different.)

[Robert]

Antonomasia wrote: "Do you find that you get bored by it now?
I have noticed that since I started using GR heavily, I see the names of books and authors so much more more often, and know more about them, so it is quit..."

As such we have only one well stocked bookstore and I visit it every six months so it's worth looking at fiction from A - Z

[Hugh, Active moderator]

To be fair I don't do the full A-Z very often, but it is always interesting to see what appears and disappears, and I quite often emerge with books that weren't on my TBR list.

[Tom]

Ella wrote: "I actually am about to give up my audible subscription b/c 1) amazon, of course, but also I keep forgetting to use my credits then I lose them. "

Sorry if this is common knowledge, but you can reduce your Audible subscription to the Silver plan if you call or chat with them. The Silver plan charges you $14 for 1 credit every OTHER month. I have been doing this for years and it's great, especially since you can return as many books as you want for more credits (so long as they were originally purchased within the last 365 days).

[Antonomasia, Admin only]

With the new CEO, I wonder if some things are going to change at Audible, especially the generous return policy. I have become very careful about what I buy on there (because I worry about it getting linked to the Amazon policy on banning people for too many returns) but I did return a lot over my first year of using it more heavily, and there's one more I'm thinking about returning.

This is how I ended up with a lot of credits - I got extra credits to get stuff in sales, then I realised the topic was wrong for me for audio, or the narrator wasn't much good after half an hour etc, and returned the books.

[Val]

Paul wrote: "Even worse - he has dissed Gumble's favourite (certainly most read) author of all time, Alistair McLean."
It is a long time since I read any of them, but didn't McLean usually use a first person narration, so the reader found out what was going on at the same time as the narrator appeared to?

[Paul]

Yes. But Child’s complaint with Ice Station Zebra is a that the first person narrator withholds certain information from not only the other characters, but the reader as well.

[Ella]

Here in the US, at least, they seem to be already changing the audible return policy. I learned of the change a month or so ago when I didn't get a credit back - I was forced to pick a book to exchange it for. (fine - I had planned on doing that anyway.) But I do expect to see more changes to their (rather generous) return policy. I do know about the silver plan. I'm on it now, and I'll probably keep it - too many audiobooks are only available on audible to really give it up completely. ALso, they have an expansive section of books in latin-american spanish, which is a joy always.

Re: bookshelves - I don't think I have ever browsed a full a-z. I also do tend to go in with a list of wishes anyway, so then I browse around those. I've been caught before walking back and forth from a book I'm trying not to buy, then going back to touch it. A coworker took a video of me doing this a year ago. All I could say was "I'm old, and books are my only vice these days."

[WndyJW]

I admire confidence and don’t even mind a touch of arrogance in (young men and) successful people, but I’m turned off by arrogance that demeans others, so Child’s claim that not only could he write literary fiction but that literary writers couldn’t write best selling formulaic genre books. I don’t think there’s much doubt that if one can write literary fiction, one could “dumb down” the prose and plug it into a formula with an added dash of exceptional character development and voila: best seller; on the other hand, if Mr Child could write literary fiction why doesn’t he show us? He certainly has the financial freedom now to take a few weeks or even a year or two and produce evidence of his literary skill.

After last year’s mess and now including Lee Child I’m disinclined to care about the Booker this year. I just looked up Margaret Busby and Lemn Sissy and they seem promising, maybe even Sameer Rahim, but I can’t figure out what type of writing he enjoys. My fear is that the Booker’s goal, like Emily Wilson’s goal with her translation of Homer, is to make the award more accessible to average readers and the Booker will be another Costa or Pulitzer and choose books that are “readable,” rather than literary.

[Sam]

WndyJW wrote: "I admire confidence and don’t even mind a touch of arrogance in (young men and) successful people, but I’m turned off by arrogance that demeans others, so Child’s claim that not only could he write..."

I understand your fear but am thinking positively instead. I am fantasizing him as an Apeirogon fan.

[Val]

He will probably say something controversial and generate publicity, although I am not suggesting that is the reason he has been chosen as a judge.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer]

I completely agree that there is no proof Child can write literary fashion - but the question surely is why he would bother. I can see why he would if he wanted to prove something but he clearly does not lack in self belief.

On the other hand as Child points out - If literary fiction authors could write bestseller genre fiction why wouldn’t they. One successful book (under a pseudonym if needed) and they could write literary fiction securely for the rest of their life and not worry about prize money, government grants, multiple jobs, Twitter appeals for funding etc

By the way I don’t like Child’s provocative public statements or think he is a good choice as a judge given what he has said. But I equally don’t like literary authors that trash genre fiction and demean others.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer]

An early prediction for the Booker longlist and Goldsmith shortlist

That Reminds Me by Derek Osuwu

My review (with a detailed comment from Anto and Paul’s attempt to get me to butter up his daughter’s teacher)

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Garry]

I have very mixed feelings about That Reminds Me. Whilst it has great literary quality, and I agree it's a contender for prizes this year, nevertheless it was grim. Not that I'm expecting to finish reading any book with a song in my heart, of course, but this was remorseless in its misery.

[Emmeline]

WndyJW wrote: "My fear is that the Booker’s goal, like Emily Wilson’s goal with her translation of Homer, is to make the award more accessible to average readers and the Booker will be another Costa or Pulitzer and choose books that are “readable,” rather than literary."

This year was a bit of a debacle, but at least one of the two winners was "literary," and they shortlisted Ducks (which I'm still trying to psych myself up for the thousand pages of), and longlisted Levy, Luiselli and Porter, and two years ago the very literary Milkman won, so it doesn't seem too grim. I do think the Booker is trying to flirt with publicity, but maybe it's healthier that they do that with a controversial judge rather than a controversial winner? Just a thought, really.

[Antonomasia, Admin only]

He has a huge readership which seems more noticeable than Val McDermid's. With the way plenty of people talk about his books I can see his presence as a judge motivating a few people to give the Booker books a go. (Maybe McDermid's did too though her fans don't seem - as far as I've noticed - as vocal or fannish.) As a way of attracting publicity I think it is about more than provocative remarks.

[WndyJW]

You’ll be surprised how fast Ducks goes, Emily. I just heard someone on a podcast this week say that the farther into the book it picks up and gains momentum.

Lee Childs is writing for money, no shame in that, but why select a judge who doesn’t think Literary Fiction is worth his time? I don’t like seeing any kind of fiction disparaged either, have recent judges made those types of statements?

My issue with the Booker is that they Longlist some exceptional books, but it’s not usually those books that win, Milkman was a wonderful surprise. As much I protest it will be hard for me to ignore the Booker since it holds a special place in my bookish heart.

[Ella]

I have to agree w/ Anto on the reasons for picking judges (always thought this was the reason for a random celebrity always stuck in the group.) I don't think this panel is about picking just a favorite "easy read" by any measure. I DO think there may be serious clashes about what lands on the lists though. Beyond The Testaments, I thought last year's lists were pretty much normal. (Even Testaments on the lists was fine, just not the end result.) I do think that Booker has been trying to do more publicity other than announcing their lists, or at least making occasional attempts in this direction.

And I completely agree with Gumble's remark: By the way I don’t like Child’s provocative public statements or think he is a good choice as a judge given what he has said. But I equally don’t like literary authors that trash genre fiction and demean others.
Overall, I've seen far more of the latter (also readers of the latter trashing "readable" or "genre" or "bestseller" books - I've been guilty of this myself, I know.) So I don't really mind Child's voice being one of a group - if he were the sole judge, I might feel otherwise. I just hope the group as a whole will feel strong enough to shut him down if he goes on a tangent in the judging process akin to his provocative statements in the press.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer]

Wendy I was not thinking of recent judges but more of a shortlisted author.