The finalists for this year’s Man Booker Prize were announced last week. They are:

Julian Barnes The Sense of an Ending (Jonathan Cape – Random House)
Sebastian Barry On Canaan’s Side (Faber)
Carol Birch Jamrach’s Menagerie (Canongate Books)
Patrick deWitt The Sisters Brothers (Granta)
Esi Edugyan Half Blood Blues (Serpent’s Tail)
Yvvette Edwards A Cupboard Full of Coats (Oneworld)
Alan Hollinghurst The Stranger’s Child (Picador – Pan Macmillan)
Stephen Kelman Pigeon English (Bloomsbury)
Patrick McGuinness The Last Hundred Days (Seren Books)
A.D. Miller Snowdrops (Atlantic)
Alison Pick Far to Go (Headline Review)
Jane Rogers The Testament of Jessie Lamb (Sandstone Press)
D.J. Taylor Derby Day (Chatto & Windus – Random House)

The shortlist of six authors will be announced on Sept. 6, and the winner announced October 18.

So far I’ve only read The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt, which I loved. You can read my review at http://2manybooks2littletime.wordpress.com/2011/06/20/the-sisters-brothers-by-patrick-dewitt-had-me-at-hello/

Have you read any of the rest of these? What did you think?

Last year I brought you the results of the 2010 Diagram Prize for the Oddest Title - Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes by Daina Taimina. The Diagram Prize administrator, Philip Stone, had this to say about it:

Although no prize is awarded to the author of the winning book, [Horace] Bent [diarist and custodian of the prize] said that last year’s winner, Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes, received a big sales boost thanks to the widespread, international coverage of the award: “Before the prize was awarded, Dr Taimina’s book was selling just half a dozen copies per week in the US. A week after she picked up my prestigious gong, her book sold an incredible 95 copies in just seven days at $35 a pop. You can’t buy that kind of publicity”.

So – you can plainly see what’s at stake here.

The new shortlist is in for the 2011 award:

• 8th International Friction Stir Welding Symposium Proceedings
  Various authors (TWI)
• The Generosity of the Dead
  Graciela Nowenstein (Ashgate)
• The Italian’s One-night Love Child
  Cathy Williams (Mills & Boon)
• Managing a Dental Practice the Genghis Khan Way
  Michael R Young (Radcliffe)
• Myth of the Social Volcano
  Martin King Whyte (Stanford University Press)
• What Color Is Your Dog?
  Joel Silverman (Kennel Club)

You can go to The Bookseller website to cast  your vote through Friday, March 25. My own vote (and I don’t want to prejudice you in any way) will go to Managing a Dental Practice the Genghis Khan Way. I believe my own dentist may already own this book!

And the winner is Managing a Dental Practice the Genghis Khan Way!

The National Book Foundation has announced the finalists for the 2010 National Book Award:

Peter Carey, Parrot and Olivier in America (Alfred A. Knopf)

Read the New York Times Review

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Jaimy Gordon, Lord of Misrule (McPherson & Co.)

Read the Kirkus Review

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Nicole Krauss, Great House (W.W. Norton & Co.)

Read the Los Angeles Times Review

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Lionel Shriver, So Much for That
(Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers)

Read the New York Times Review

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Karen Tei Yamashita, I Hotel (Coffee House Press)

Read the International Examiner Review

The big news, of course, is the omission of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom from this list. Also missing are Matterhorn (Karl Marlantes) and The Imperfectionists (Tom Rachman),  two other well-reviewed best-selling titles. As far as I’m concerned, it’s more interesting that two of these nominated books are virtually unknown and unreviewed. Is the absence of Freedom from this list a matter of sour grapes on the part of the reviewers (Andrei Codrescu, Samuel R. Delany, Sabina Murray, Joanna Scott, and Carolyn See) or do the more obscure titles selected have greater literary value? I haven’t read any of the nominees, so I’m not really in a position to say.

Have you read any? What are your thoughts? Speaking for myself, I’m interested in getting my hands on them to find out!

Although she couldn’t have known this, Jennifer at Book Noise gave me the Versatile Blogger Award just two days before my first anniversary as a blogger. Her fabulous other-worldly blog must have provided her with special powers, because her timing for this award is a perfect way for me to celebrate my first year in the blogosphere. Thanks, Jennifer!!

• Here are the rules for the award:1. Thank and link back to the person who gave you the award.
  2. Share 7 things about yourself.
  3. Pass the award on to 10 bloggers who you have recently discovered and who you think are fantastic.
  4. Contact the bloggers you’ve picked and let them know about the award.

Seven things about me:

1. I retired in June from a long and very fulfilling career in education.

2. I have recently purchased my third Kindle (and that’s not counting the one I had to replace because my dog chewed it up).

3. My idea of the perfect day always includes a visit to a great independent bookstore – usually Laguna Beach Books.

4. Although I rarely read crime novels or thrillers, Michael Connelly and Dennis Lehane are two of my favorite authors.

5. In my work as a school district administrator, librarians were my favorite people to work with. They are unsung heroes!

6. If I ever had an insane amount of money, I would purchase rare first-edition books.

7. I wish I had a personal story that was interesting enough to get on NPR’s This American Life.

I’m spreading the love to…

1. The Book Stop

2. Tony’s Book World

3. The Book Affair

4. Bibliophiliac

5. The Tower of Stories

6. Curl Up and Read

7. Estella’s Revenge

8. Leeswamme’s Blog

9. The Book Jotter

10. Page Turners

I have to admit that after reading a summary of this novel I was concerned that the “creep factor” was going to be too much for me. I almost passed it by, but because it was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, I decided to take a chance.

I’m glad that I did.

Briefly, this is the story of a woman raising her 5-year old son, Jack, in the confines of an 11 x 11 foot room. They have no contact with the outside world except for a nightly visitor whom the child calls “Old Nick”. See – lots of reason to be suspicious of just how creepy it will be. Here’s why it’s not . . .

First, the emphasis is on how the woman, whom we only know as “Ma”, struggles to construct an existence for her son that is as close to normal as possible. She’s brave, creative, and loving, knowing that she is, literally, her son’s whole world.

Second, Donoghue has done an excellent job thinking through how things would appear to a child whose only exposure to the “real” world is through the limited amount of television he’s allowed to watch. Some of his observations are funny, some poignant, but most ring true. She has invented a language structure for the boy, which for me was unnecessarily juvenile, but it didn’t get in the way of my interest and enjoyment in the story.

Third, and this was important to me, the details of Old Nick’s visits are alluded to, but not described in any detail. As adults, we know what’s going on, but it’s clear that Ma has protected Jack from the more horrifying realities of their life inside “Room”.

I can’t give you many more specifics without giving away the plot, but this was worth reading simply for its originality and the warm relationship between mother and son. Not sure that it’s actually Booker Prize material, but I guess we’ll know on October 12!

Grade: B

Winner will be announced Tuesday, October 12

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

Emma Donoghue Room (Picador – Pan Macmillan)

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

Howard Jacobson The Finkler Question (Bloomsbury)

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

Tom McCarthy C (Jonathan Cape – Random House)

For full information go to http://www.themanbookerprize.com/news/stories/1451

Have you read any of these? Any opinions about which to read and/or which should win?

Nominees for the 2010 Man Booker Prize were announced today. Check it out!

Martin Amis said it - is it true that only unenjoyable books win literary prizes? According to Amis, who has never won a major prize, judges “do not appreciate fun literature.”

This made me wonder – sour grapes or is there truth to the statement? I can imagine that to have produced the body of work that Amis has, it must be frustrating to be passed over, but does this speak to literary prize judges or to Amis’ work itself?

I decided to go back an look at a few prize winners, to see if I thought any were enoyable, and guess what – not only did I find many enjoyable, but more than a few were “fun”.

Here are some examples:

The National Book Award:

Three Junes by Julia Glass

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

Charming Billy by Alice McDermott

The Shipping News by Annie Proulx

And this is only going back as far as 1993 – there’s also The World According to Garp (John Irving), Flannery O’Connor: The Complete Stories, Goodbye, Columbus (Philip Roth) . . .

The Pen/Faulkner Award:

I had to admit, Amis was a little more on-point with this one. Lots of good winners, but I don’t think many would qualify as “fun”:

War Dances by Sherman Alexie definitely had it’s humorous moments, but it won over Sag Harbor (Colson Whitehead), which is decidedly more entertaining

The Great Man by Kate Christensen was reviewed as “witty,” but I haven’t read it, so I can’t comment

From here, it’s one buzz-kill after another: Everyman (one of  Philip Roth’s darker novels), The March (E.L. Doctorow), a couple by the fabulous, but not “enjoyable” Ha Jin.

Some of the titles that were nominated but didn’t win Pen/Faulkner and were, in my opnion, more enjoyable than the winners: All Aunt Hagar’s Children (Edward P Jones), The Corrections, The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)

Thinking that maybe Amis was unhappy because he didn’t win his own country’s most prestigious award, I decided to check up on . . .

The Man/Booker Prize:

This is where Amis’ argument really falls apart, because there are some decidedly entertaining – as well as fun – titles that have won this prize:

Wolf Hall by Hillary Mantel

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga (this one alone belies the “no fun” accusation)

The Life of Pi by Yann Martel (not a favorite of mine, but 1500 Amazon.com readers can’t be all wrong)

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

The list goes on – and includes Amis’ father, Kingsley Amis’ The Old Devils.

Kingsley claims that “I want to give the reader the best glass of wine I have, the best food in my kitchen.”  Maybe he needs to recognize that, just as many outstanding cooks will never be Julia Child, many great books are not award winners. No need to be petty about it.