2021 Booker Prize Shortlist Discussion

[WndyJW]

David wrote: "It might be interesting to do a separate thread where everyone can weigh in on what prizes they plan to follow and subscriptions they have for 2022."

We have a Folder Rule and General Discussion thread under our Favorite Presses folder, we could chat there about subscriptions, David, and we have Book Chat folder where we could create a Favorite Prizes thread to discuss all the various prizes and which we would like to follow, if that’s okay with the moderators.

[Anna]

Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer wrote: "Whereas books I lend to you appear to be sold on We Buy Books ...."

This is funny. I've been regularly buying from WeBuyBooks for years. They miraculously have lovely hardbacks of all the recent publications I shelve here often thanks to your reviews. This is how I got Census by Jesse Ball, Sight by Greengrass, Memories of the Future, a nice signed copy of Lerner's 10:04, Fonseca's Natural History.

[Paul]

If any are signed to Paul or Graham those came from me! Actually I don’t think I have sold any copies signed to Gumble but I certainly have sold one signed to me. That actually can lower the value of the book as counts as minor damage!

[Emmeline]

Joy D wrote: "The library is a wonderful source and I was amazed at how many of the Booker Longlist that they had on hand - not a big waiting list either in my area. "

Absolutely. Long live libraries! I live abroad, so tend not to have library access to new books in English but do manage to get a few ebooks via my parents' library. In a way I'm happy not to have the chance to read longlists as there are just so many things to read and I'm not sure my tastes really run to prize fiction all that much.

[WndyJW]

I just saw the handmade books for the Booker shortlistees and I think they’re disappointing. The book for The Promise looks very much like my copy of and this cover . Not too much imagination went into Galgut’s handcrafted book.
Lockwood’s looks like a high schooler’s school notebook, but fits the content.
Powers’ is just a blue glowing ball on a white page.
Mohamed’s book cover used photos of the real Mahmood Mattan, which is a fitting tribute to him and his family.
Shipstead’s copy is okay, but it’s very similar to the abstract cover of the novel only with pastel colors instead of vibrant colors.
Arudpragasam’s bespoke cover is also abstract and makes sense I guess, but I didn’t find it evocative.

I’m sure they’re all quite valuable in spite of the opinion of some woman in a suburb of Cleveland.

[Henk]

I was surprised they already did it for 38! Years for the shortlistees

[WndyJW]

I didn’t know they had been doing it for that long.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer]

Rowan Williams writing in the New Statesman today

“It’s our first meeting in person as judges, and there is real delight at seeing one another in the flesh. It has felt like a lively, warm and engaged group all through the months of Zoom meetings, and it rapidly becomes clear that we are going to get on in the same spirit face to face. An animated general exchange begins about what makes a great novel. Good novels are ones that we want to put into friends’ hands, that will be read in a decade and more, that earn their effects and think through their rhythm and composition; great novels take us somewhere new, whether in evoking experience that hasn’t been chronicled, or the new music of linguistic inventiveness, or a formal or structural freshness. Then, we set to an unhurried but sometimes intense revisiting of five superb books that we’ve all now read several times. We read passages to each other, argue about whether this or that effect is deliberate, point out patterns that we think someone else has missed; we enthuse, dissect, disagree, rethink, and gradually, by mid-afternoon, arrive. Time for a glass of something and much exuberance over the decision and the whole process; a strong sense of becoming genuine friends through this work.”

So which book did they not re-read or was not superb?

[Paul]

I would assume the Lockwood.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer]

Seems unlikely as she (Lockwood) is the only non-winning author he specifically commends in the article - and its not the winner as he makes it clear he was very happy with the decision and refers to Galgut's book several times.

I think there is a pretty obvious candidate which it seems unlikely that the judges really would read several times given its length and lack of merit.

[Paul]

Yes fair. More likely a typo I suspect though?

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer]

Definitely a typo - I was simply being mischievous

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer]

Its actually a very good article in a momentous week for him (Booker judge and birth of first grandchild) - I thought this was particularly good

A quick trip to Cambridge for a panel discussion with the secretary-general of the UN (fresh – if that’s the word – from Glasgow) and a couple of brilliantly articulate students on ethics and climate change. A gear shift? Well, sort of. But in fact my week’s themes crowd in. Talking about future generations has acquired more concrete reality in the last day or so. Prompted by a recent conversation I had with a Jewish friend, I say a bit about the shemitta ideal in the Torah, the “jubilee year” in which slaves are freed and the land is left fallow, so that we remember we don’t and can’t have a proprietorial relation to what is around us, human or non-human. Reflecting on the preceding days’ discussions, I wonder if the point of art is to spring us from just that trap of being proprietorial, to loosen our chokehold on what we think we own and understand and make us ready to learn and receive again. Damon Galgut’s Booker winner suddenly comes into fresh focus – a darkly satirical look at the ingenious resources we devote to preserving ownership, control, enslavement.

And then to our daughter in Walthamstow at last. The week started with rain pounding on the roof, something uncontrollable arriving, sheer grace if you like. And here it is again in quite different shape. A gratuitous, vulnerable, lovely new beginning.

[WndyJW]

That’s sweet.