Aug 18
Book number 5 for our shadow panel is History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund. Five of us read this book. Once again we reviewed the book on the following criteria: 1) writing quality; 2) originality; 3) character development; 4) plot development; and 5) overall enjoyment. We’ve each provided mini-reviews and ratings. Here are our ratings for History of Wolves.
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Aug 15
Book 4 for our shadow panel is Zadie Smith’s Swing Time. This time only three of us read the book which says something about either our collective level of interest or the length of the book. Our panel reviewed the book on the following criteria: 1) writing quality; 2) originality; 3) character development; 4) plot development; and 5) overall enjoyment. We’ve each provided mini-reviews and ratings. We hope you speak up and let us know what you thought about the book. Here are our ratings…
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Aug 14
Book 3 for our shadow panel is Sebastian Barry’s Days Without End. Once again, our panel reviewed the book on the following criteria: 1) writing quality; 2) originality; 3) character development; 4) plot development; and 5) overall enjoyment. We’ve each provided mini-reviews and ratings. We hope you join in by adding your thoughts about the book too. Here are our ratings…
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Aug 10
Next up for our Shadow panel is Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders. Our panel reviewed the book on the following criteria: 1) writing quality; 2) originality; 3) character development; 4) plot development; and 5) overall enjoyment. We’ve each provided mini-reviews and ratings. We hope you add your own thoughts and comments. Here are our ratings…
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Aug 8
It’s officially time to begin our shadow panel reviews. For those of you who don’t know us well, each year we gather a group of panelists to do a shadow panel of the Man Booker longlist books. Our panel collectively reviews all the books on the longlist and at the end of the month we will make our predictions. Each week we will post 2-3 reviews with our ratings.
Our panel reviews each the book on the following criteria: 1) writing quality; 2) originality; 3) character development; 4) plot development; and 5) overall enjoyment. We’ve each provided mini-reviews and ratings. We rank books using that criteria to produce an “objective” ranking of our top 6 books.
First up for our Shadow panel is Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad. A few of us (not me) predicted this would make the longlist. Here are our mini reviews and ratings for The Underground Railroad.
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Aug 7
This week we will start posting our panel reviews and rankings for the 2017 Man Booker longlist. Before we do so, however, we wanted to introduce our panel of judges. Book Worm and I have done this shadow panel for a few years. Last year we were joined by a few contributors including Andrew and Nicole and this year we added two new panelists: Lisa and Anita. Keep reading to find out more about each one of us and to see what types of books we generally like or dislike. Read more
Aug 2
Next up before we get to our Man Booker shadow panel reviews is a psychological thriller that may be perfect for the summer. Book Worm reviews this book. Here is what she thought. Read more
Aug 1
While our shadow panel is hard at work reading though the 2017 Man Booker longlist, we’ll be posted a few of the book reviews for books we managed to finish shortly before the longlist announcement. Book Worm takes the lead with her review of Tracy Chevalier’s new book, New Boy. Read more
Jul 26
It’s official! The Man Booker Longlist was just announced. How did our shadow panel do with our predictions? Here are the books that made the list… Read more
Jul 24
The 2017 Man Booker longlist will be announced on July 27. Those of you who follow our blog know that we are obsessed with the Man Booker and for the last two years, BW and I have tried to read our way through the entire long list in order to make our predictions. This year our panel comes back together to make predictions on which book will win the prize. Our panel this year is comprised of BW and myself along with three contributors: Nicole, Lisa, and Andrew. Nicole and Andrew were part of the panel last year and Lisa joins us this year. We also have a guest reviewer who will step in to help out when needed. Book Worm and I will be attempting to read all the nominated books and our three contributors will be helping out along the way.
Each panel member made predictions for which books will make the longlist. Panelists were able to nominate up to 13 books for the list but some chose to nominate fewer. Here are our thoughts and predictions: Read more
Book Worm
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