Longlist Booker 2010

[Christina Stind]

Peter Carey Parrot and Olivier in America (Faber and Faber)

Emma Donoghue Room (Pan MacMillan - Picador)

Helen Dunmore The Betrayal (Penguin - Fig Tree)

Damon Galgut In a Strange Room (Grove Atlantic - Atlantic Books)

Howard Jacobson The Finkler Question (Bloomsbury)

Andrea Levy The Long Song
(Headline Publishing Group - Headline Review)

Tom McCarthy C (Random House - Jonathan Cape)

David Mitchell The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (Hodder & Stoughton - Sceptre)

Lisa Moore February (Random House - Chatto & Windus)

Paul Murray Skippy Dies (Penguin - Hamish Hamilton)

Rose Tremain Trespass (Random House - Chatto & Windus)

Christos Tsiolkas The Slap (Grove Atlantic - Tuskar Rock)

Alan Warner The Stars in the Bright Sky
(Random House - Jonathan Cape)

[Christina Stind]

Anybody have any thoughts on the longlist?
I had already added David Mitchell to my to-read list but now I've also added The Slap and Room - something about Room just makes me want to pick it up and read it right away ...

[Heather]

The Slap was awful, I thought! Didn't at all live up to the hype surrounding it, and really, who needs to drop the C-bomb THAT much?! The characters were all disgusting and I didn't find that I could relate to any one of them, which is a major set-back if you're supposed to be understanding the motives for their actions. Not an enjoyable read.

[Darryl]

Hello! I've just joined this group.

So far I've read three of the books on this year's longlist: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, which is one of my favorite novels of the year so far; In a Strange Room, which was very good; and The Long Song, which was a good book, but nowhere near as good as her earlier novel Small Island. I'm about a third of the way through The Finkler Question, and should finish it by tomorrow.

I own 10 of the Booker Dozen books, all but Room, C, and Skippy Dies, and I'll buy them as soon as they are published in the US.

[Joel]

Thousand Autumns and C were both amazing.