Oct 3
Over the next month, our panel will be giving their thoughts on each of the nominated shortlist books. We’ll tell you briefly what we think of the book, the reasons we think it might win, and the reasons why it might not win. Next up is Exit West by Mohsin Hamid. Keep reading to see what we think about whether it will be our 2017 Man Booker winner. Read more
Sep 22
Over the next month, our panel will be giving their thoughts on each of the nominated shortlist books. We’ll tell you briefly what we think of the book, the reasons we think it might win, and the reasons why it might not win. First up is Lincoln in the Bardo, a book that our entire panel managed to read. Keep reading to see what we think about whether it will be our 2017 Man Booker winner. Read more
Sep 11
Our final book is 4321. Because it’s such a monster of a book, only two panelists were able to finish the book although Book Worm is currently reading it too. 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. And with 4321, we now have our collective rankings of all 13 longlist books. Tomorrow we’ll also post our individual predictions and preferences (which will vary from judge to judge).
Here are our ratings for 4 3 2 1…
Read more
Sep 5
Up next our panel reviews book #9: Solar Bones by Mike McCormack. Three panels 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 thoughts, reviews, and/or comments. Here are our ratings…
Read more
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.
Read more
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…
Read more
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.
Read more
jenp27
Nicole Del Sesto
The Reader's Room 