Bookerish Burbling

And I was just about to point you all towards The Guardian, to vote for your choice of genre awesomeness in the supposed former broadsheet's "Not the Booker" award, when I realised the deadline was up. In the words of a certain other Scotsman... too late it was, too late.

Well. There's always the Booker itself to burble about, though I confess to having read a whopping none of the six shortlisted titles. Every year I flirt with the notion of reading them all - not necessarily before the eventual winner has been announced, either. Every year a website, The Book People, offers a scorcher of a deal of a lot of all six, making it easy for me to do just that. And every year, I flail at the thought, and fail. This year promises to be no different.

The shortlist:

Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey

Room by Emma Donoghue

In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut

The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson

The Long Song by Andrea Levy

C by Tom McCarthy

Of which, only the lattermost two interest me even remotely, and neither because the Booker gives a damn. Thanks to the scratchy transparency of its wicked-looking cover, C grabbed me in advance of the buzz it's been on the end of as a result of the judges' attention - or at least my awareness thereof - while my interest in The Long Song was piqued months ago. I've read Levy before and I wouldn't be averse, I suppose, to reading her again.

There. That's the sum total of the enthusiasm I can muster of the Booker shortlist this year. To be honest, I probably won't read either C or The Long Song; I'm far too busy mourning my dearth of interest in Lost, a show I absolutely loved in its first few years, but find myself utterly unmoved by in the final seasons my other half and I have been catching up on. On the other hand, I'm loving - loving - The Pillars of the Earth, the eight-hour miniseries based on Ken Follett's novel of the same name. And I see Follett has a new novel which sees the author's focus shift from ancient England to not-so-ancient Wales and the Russian Revolution coming out at the end of the month. Coincidence, I wonder? Well, whatever. I'm certainly a damn sight more likely to check Fall of Giants out after I'm through with The Pillars of the Earth than I was before.

What an odd blog post this has been...

Normal service shall resume shortly! :)