The Booker Long List

The Booker Long List is out and damn them, I have only read one of them. Last year I did my own Booker Prize award...I read every book on the shortlist and put them in order of preference.

My views of last years short list were:

Didn’t like: ‘The Gathering’ Anne Enright

Liked: ‘Mister Pip’ Lloyd Jones, ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ Mohsin Hamid

Love: ‘On Chesil Beach’ Ian McEwan, ‘Animal’s People’ Indra Sinha and ‘Darkmans’ Nicola Barker.

I chose in the end, Animal's People by Indra Sinha but the other Booker Panel (the one consisting of the great and the good and not just me) chose Anne Enright's The Gathering. Bleaurgh, such a depressing book... oh well, there's no accounting for taste I suppose.

Still, I had better get reading and hope I pick the best ones first, as the only one I've read this time is 'The Enchantress of Florence' by Salman Rushdie, which is great and I predict will make it onto the short list!

There's some other good authors on the long list, Amitav Ghosh and Sebatian Barry being amongst my favourites there.

And Jonathan, from The Bookseller Crow will be pleased at least!

Has anybody else read any of them and could recommend any to start with?

The Booker 2008 Long List

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga (Atlantic)
Girl in a Blue Dress by Gaynor Arnold (Tindal Street Press)
The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry (Faber and Faber)
From A to X by John Berger (Verso)
The Lost Dog by Michelle de Kretser (Chatto & Windus)
Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh (John Murray)
The Clothes on Their Backs by Linda Grant (Virago)
The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher (Fourth Estate)
Netherland by Joseph O'Neill (Fourth Estate)
The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie (Jonathan Cape)
Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith (Simon & Schuster)
A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz (Hamish Hamilton)