Possibly my favorite event of the year in Book World is the Booker Prize. I usually find a ton of new books to read and some real winners I wouldn’t have heard of or necessarily tried otherwise.
And this year for the first time I have actually read some of the books!
Nominated Books Include:
A Passage North, Anuk Arudpragasam
Second Place, Rachel Cusk
The Promise, Damon Galgut
The Sweetness of Water, Nathan Harris
Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro
An Island, Karen Jennings
A Town Called Solace, Mary Lawson
No One is Talking About This, Patricia Lockwood
The Fortune Men, Nadifa Mohamed
Bewilderment, Richard Powers
China Room, Sunjeev Sahota
Great Circle, Maggie Shipstead
Light Perpetual, Francis Spufford
More information can be found at the Booker Site.
And if someone can explain this one to me… It’s a rare DNF on my part.
I’ve seen people call this a novel in two parts (or in some cases two separate novels) one about a women buried in and living in the social media world and the second about grief. Which I’m sure was very moving but I couldn’t get past the beginning. It probably shouldn’t surprise me because I actually do think Twitter is a disaster.
Other likely unpopular opinion:
I thought Klara and the Sun about an artificial friend was beautifully written and in places moving with great ideas peaking through. But because it was told only through Klara’s point of view… a little boring and kind only touching the surface of the stuff that I was most interested in.
What was the illness? What was going on with these kids?
Luckily I did recently read Great Circle!
This is a historical fiction split about the life of a female aviator from around 1917 until she disappears in the 50’s and in current time the Hollywood actress whose about to star in the film version of her life.
Although even there I don’t think the two POVS entirely gelled much as I love behind the scenes Hollywood stories.
There’s 5 other books on the list I hope to read. (And if you like the audio book option make note that Indira Varma narrates the China Room book so I may go that way with that one!) Unfortunately the new Richard Powers book isn’t out until late September so well see what the other books do to me first 🙂