Sep 21
The time has come for our shortlist predictions. We’ve spent the last few months reading all the longlist books and rating the nominees. Keep reading to see which books topped our collective list and what panelists picked as their personal predictions.
Read moreJul 21
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.
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Our second to last book is Enlightenment by Sarah Perry. Only two of our judges managed to finish this one. One abandoned it and another judge is about halfway through so the rating for this may change slightly when she finishes it.
Cover blurb: Thomas Hart and Grace Macaulay have lived all their lives in the small Essex town of Aldleigh. Though separated in age by three decades, the pair are kindred spirits—torn between their commitment to religion and their desire to explore the world beyond their small Baptist community.
It is two romantic relationships that will rend their friendship, and in the wake of this rupture, Thomas develops an obsession with a vanished nineteenth-century astronomer said to haunt a nearby manor, and Grace flees Aldleigh entirely for London. Over the course of twenty years, by coincidence and design, Thomas and Grace will find their lives brought back into orbit as the mystery of the vanished astronomer unfolds into a devastating tale of love and scientific pursuit. Thomas and Grace will ask themselves what it means to love and be loved, what is fixed and what is mutable, how much of our fate is predestined and written in the stars, and whether they can find their way back to each other.
A thrillingly ambitious novel of friendship, faith, and unrequited love, rich in symmetry and symbolism, Enlightenment is a shimmering wonder of a book and Sarah Perry’s finest work to date.
You can purchase a copy of the book here.
Keep reading to find out how our panellists rated this book.
Read moreAug 23
Up next for our panel is Samantha Harvey’s Orbital. Orbital is Harvey’s fifth novel. It has received some glowing reviews from various literary critics.
Cover blurb: A slender novel of epic power, Orbital deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men traveling through space. Selected for one of the last space station missions of its kind before the program is dismantled, these astronauts and cosmonauts—from America, Russia, Italy, Britain, and Japan—have left their lives behind to travel at a speed of over seventeen thousand miles an hour as the earth reels below. We glimpse moments of their earthly lives through brief communications with family, their photos and talismans; we watch them whip up dehydrated meals, float in gravity-free sleep, and exercise in regimented routines to prevent atrophying muscles; we witness them form bonds that will stand between them and utter solitude. Most of all, we are with them as they behold and record their silent blue planet. Their experiences of sixteen sunrises and sunsets and the bright, blinking constellations of the galaxy are at once breathtakingly awesome and surprisingly intimate.
Profound and contemplative, Orbital is a moving elegy to our environment and planet.
You can purchase a copy of the book here.
Keep reading to find out how our panellists rated this book.
Read moreJul 19
This Plague of Souls by Mike McCormack
Published: October 26, 2023
Rating: ★★★★
Order it here: This Plague of Souls
Nealon has just been released from prison and arrives to an empty house. Where are his wife and son? Why was Nealon in prison? As Nealon reflects on the past, loss, loneliness, fatherhood, and life’s meaning, his reveries are interrupted by a mysterious caller who appears to have answers to Nealon’s musings. Described as a metaphysical thriller or noir, This Plague of Souls is a follow up (although can be read as a stand alone) book to Solar Bones. But is it worth the read?
Read moreApr 30
I am a huge Margaret Atwood fan and several of her books are among my favorites of all time. So when it came to selecting a book for Women’s History month for my joint reading challenge (my partner and I are reading and discussing a book each month), I immediately thought of this book. I’m late to reviewing it since I wanted to pair the review with the series and it took us over a month to get to the series. I had read Alias Grace when it first came out but didn’t remember too much about it. I tend to gravitate more toward her less conventional (e.g., dystopian, genre bending) books than her straight historical fiction novels. My partner had not read any of her books, and I was a bit tired of some of the other types of genres we had picked in prior months (I needed a serious break from books like Black Leopard, Red Wolf – sorry James). So it was the perfect time for us to read an Atwood novel. Here’s what I thought.
Read moreMar 25
I’ve been trying to be proactive this year in my selection of novels in preparation for a more informed Booker prediction list. So, I requested, and received, an ARC of Cusk’s latest novel Parade (thank you to Farrer,Straus, and Gioux and net galley).
I have a love-hate relationship with Cusk’s novels. They are brilliant but they also often make me feel like I need an advanced literary degree in order to make it through them. So how did this latest novel stack up for me?
Read moreMar 20
If you have yet to read a novel by Percival Everett, then you are missing out. While Everett has written 19 books over the last 20+ years, I didn’t discover his works until reading The Trees, which was shortlisted (it should have won) for the Booker in 2022. His latest novel, James, came out yesterday and will undoubtedly make its way onto at least one literary award list. I was lucky enough to get an advanced copy and here is what I thought…
Read moreMar 11
Acclaimed short story writer, Colin Barrett, is coming out with his debut novel, Wild Houses and I was fortunate enough to snag an Advanced copy (thank you to Grove Press). This book has been getting quite a lot of buzz in literary circles. Here is my review…
Read moreAug 31
Next up for our panel, we travel to Malaysia with Tan Tan Eng’s The House of Doors
Tan Twan Eng is probably one of the more well known authors on the list. He was born in Penang, Malaysia, and worked as an advocate in one of Kuala Lumpur’s leading law firms before becoming a full-time writer. His prior two novels were also listed as candidates for the Booker Prize. His second novel, The Garden of Evening Mists was shortlisted for the 2012 Booker prize and was named one of the 1001 books to read before you die (a list that brought several of our panelists together).
Synopsis from Booker Prize website: It is 1921 and at Cassowary House in the Straits Settlements of Penang, Robert Hamlyn is a well-to-do lawyer, his steely wife Lesley a society hostess. Their lives are invigorated when Willie, an old friend of Robert’s, comes to stay.
Willie Somerset Maugham is one of the greatest writers of his day. But he is beleaguered by an unhappy marriage, ill-health and business interests that have gone badly awry. He is also struggling to write. The more Lesley’s friendship with Willie grows, the more clearly she see him as he is – a man who has no choice but to mask his true self.
As Willie prepares to face his demons, Lesley confides secrets of her own, including her connection to the case of an Englishwoman charged with murder in the Kuala Lumpur courts – a tragedy drawn from fact, and worthy of fiction.
The novel will be released in the US on October 17th, 2023 and you can pre-order your copy here
Keep reading to find out how our panelists rated this book.
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