The Reader's Room

Aug 29

2025 Booker Longlist: Flashlight by Susan Choi

Next up for our panel is Susan Choi’s Flashlight. All five panelists read this book and we were pretty split in our reviews. Which reviewer do you side with?

Aug 25

1 Comment

2025 Booker Longlist: One Boat by Jonathan Buckley

Next up for our panel is One Boat by Jonathan Buckley. Four of our panelists finished and reviewed the book, one abandoned it. Here are our reviews.

Aug 22

4 Comments

2025 Booker Longlist: Audition by Katie Kitamura

Our panel’s first longlist nominee is Audition by Katie Kitamura. Four of our panelists read this book, one panelist couldn’t finish it. Here are our panelists’ reviews…

Jul 29

6 Comments

2025 Booker Longlist

It’s out! The Booker longlist was released today at 2pm BST. How did our panel do with their predictions? Here are the thirteen books that made the list.

Jul 21

8 Comments

2025 Booker Prize Longlist Predictions

Once again Booker has rolled around. Every year our panel comes together to read and review all the booker nominees and to predict the winners. This year’s longlist will be announced on July 29. Every year we try and most years we fail spectacularly to get more than 3 correct predictions each. Will we have better luck this year? Keep reading to find out who we all selected and let us know what you think.

Jun 10

6 Comments

Audition by Katie Kitamura

Life has been hectic so the blog has been slow/dormant for a few months. Despite my silence, I’ve been reading a decent amount and trying to go into Booker season with more books under my belt. Audition has been getting some very mixed reviews and I know quite a few people who hated it and abandoned it. Keep reading for my review. Will this make my prediction list for this year’s Booker longlist?

Jan 10

5 Comments

The City and its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami

Those of you who have followed the blog for a while already know that Murakami is one of my favorite authors so it’s probably no surprise that I picked a Murakami novel as my first read of the year. 2024 was less than stellar for me from a reading perspective. Work burnout and life stress left me with little energy and motivation to read (outside of our Booker feature) and even less time. So I go into 2025 hoping for a better reading year and I always enjoy a good Murakami novel. Did this book live up to my expectation? keep reading to find out.

Nov 11

Booker 2024 Winner predictions

It’s time for our panel to pick our winner. Find out which book our panelists think will win the prize this year. The prize will be announced tomorrow (and thus the reason for why I pushed out the last three posts in the same day.

Nov 11

Booker shortlist 2024: Held by Anne Michaels

Apologies for rushing through these last three posts but time got away from me and I wanted to post this last one before our predictions post (which I will also post tonigh). Our panel had somewhat mixed reviews for Held. You can read our short reviews here: Held. The novel made it onto 3 of our predictions lists with Nicole, Tracy, and Anita predicting it. The Booker judges had this to say about the book…

‘The first few pages of this brief kaleidoscopic novel from the author of Fugitive Pieces may seem forbidding, yet every member of the judging panel was transported by this book. Michaels, a poet, is utterly uncompromising in her vision and execution. She is writing about war, trauma, science, faith and above all love and human connection; her canvas is a century of busy history, but she connects the fragments of her story through theme and image rather than character and chronology, intense moments surrounded by great gaps of space and time. Appropriately for a novel about consciousness, it seems to alter and expand your state of mind. Reading it is a unique experience.’

What does our panel think of the odds of this book being this year’s winner? Keep reading to find out

Nov 11

Booker Shortlist 2024: Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood

The verdict was also unanimous on this book: Our whole panel loved it. You can read our short reviews here: Stone Yard Devotional. The Booker judges had this to say about the book…

‘Sometimes a visitor becomes a resident, and a temporary retreat becomes permanent. This happens to the narrator in Stone Yard Devotional – a woman with seemingly solid connections to the world who changes her life and settles into a monastery in rural Australia. Yet no shelter is impermeable. The past, in the form of the returning bones of an old acquaintance, comes knocking at her door; the present, in the forms of a global pandemic and a local plague of mice and rats, demands her attention. The novel thrilled and chilled the judges – it’s a book we can’t wait to put into the hands of readers.’

You can read more about the novel and an author interview on the booker prize website: here.

What does our panel think of the odds of this book being this year’s winner? Keep reading to find out