Oct 11
Next up on our list of Man Booker candidates is Hot Milk by Deborah Levy. Once again, all five of us read this book and most of us loved it. Here are our thoughts on its chances of taking home the big prize. Read more
Oct 10
With the date for the finalist looming (winner will be announced October 25), our panel of 5 judges has decided to feature each of the 6 finalists. In each of the 6 posts we’ll give our thoughts about the pros and cons of each book taking home the prize. We hope you chime in and let us know what you think of each book. First up is a book that all of us liked: The Sellout by Paul Beatty. Read more
Oct 1
It is finally time for our September Monthly recap! Find out which books were favorites and which were duds. We’ll end our wrap up with a a list of books due out in October and a glimpse of our upcoming content. We also want to hear from you so let us know what you read this month and what you look forward to reading next month.
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Sep 30
There is no such thing as a universally loved book. Each month, we’ll feature a book from Time’s list of the best 100 English language novels of all time. From the nasty to the snarky to the downright absurd, we’ll highlight some of the strange reasons why some people hate these great reads. This month we’ll be taking a look at reviews for Catch-22 by Joseph Heller.
Those of you who are regular followers of our blog know that we’ve been hosting a summer reading challenge based on the 2016 summer Olympics. With only four more days left in the challenge, we thought we’d post an update. Five teams of 5 people have been competing for a chance to win cool bookish prizes. Here’s how things are going… Read more
Sep 15
‘Tis the season for literary awards. Earlier this week The Man Booker judges released their shortlist while the National Book Foundation released their nominees for poetry, nonfiction, and young peoples literature. Today they released their nominees for fiction. Interestingly, there is surprisingly little overlap between the awards (Bailey’s prize, Man Booker, and National Book Awards) proving once again that judging books is completely subjective. Here is the list of fiction nominees for the National Book Awards. Read more
Sep 13
It official. The 2016 Man Booker shortlist was announced this morning. Yesterday we made our predictions. How did we do? Here are the 6 books that made the cut: Read more
Sep 12
Combined our shadow panel of 5 judges managed to read all 13 books. We rated all the books on the following criteria: 1) writing quality; 2) originality; 3) character development; 4) plot development; and 5) enjoyment. Unlike some of the other shadow panels and reviewers out there (you should read the (Wo)man Booker shadow panel reviews if you haven’t already done so), our consensus about the list was that it was pretty strong. Keep reading to find out how each book was ranked and which books we predict will make the list. Read more
Sep 9
Those of you who have been following our blog know that we’ve been doing a shadow panel for the Man Booker longlist books. Our 5 judges (myself included) have been reading through the longlist and tomorrow we will be making our predictions for which books we think will make the shortlist. However, before we get to the shortlist, we wanted to share some of our thoughts about the longlist books. Want to know which author we’d like to have dinner with, which cover we liked best, which book gave us nightmares? Keep reading to find out.
Sep 8
We made it! With this book, our shadow panel has officially completed all the Longlist books. Book Worm and I read all 13 books and our three fabulous contributors managed to read quite an astounding number of them. Our final book is The Schooldays of Jesus by J.M. Coetzee. Tomorrow we will post our overall reflections of the Longlist, Monday we will post our shortlist predictions, and Tuesday the Man Booker committee will release the shortlist. Keep reading to see what we thought of this last book and for our full rankings of all 13 books.
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Nicole Del Sesto
The Reader's Room 