Arts The Man Booker Prize Short List Has Been Released
And David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green isn’t on it. Neither is Peter Carey’s Theft: A Love Story. Does this mean that Jen Graves and I are avenged? Lifted from Forbes.com:
The six books shortlisted by a panel of judges are: “In the Country of Men,” Hisham Matar’s semi-autobiographical first novel about childhood in Moammar Gadhafi’s Libya; “The Secret River,” Kate Grenville’s tale of life in an Australian penal colony; “The Night Watch,” Sarah Waters’ novel about characters whose fates intertwine during World War II; “The Inheritance of Loss,” Kiran Desai’s cross-continental saga set in New York and India; “Carry Me Down,” the story of an unusual boy, by Irish-Australian novelist M.J. Hyland; and “Mother’s Milk,” a portrait of a rich but dysfunctional family by English writer Edward St. Aubyn.
Anyone want to handicap these? I’m thinking Sarah Waters doesn’t have a chance and Kiran Desai is the one to beat.
Why, exactly, should people in Seattle care about a prize given in a little island in the Atlantic Ocean, an island about the size of the Olympic Peninsula? What makes this even more insulting to my brief attention span, scrolling through your so called blog looking for screenshots from Hump is that this prize is for a novel. The Man Booker is for 1) a book that is 2) not even real in 3) an empire that no longer exists. Who cares? Perhaps you should devote your attention to handicapping the employee of the month at Pizza Hut? It's about the same thing. Why don't you list the top five upsell techniques used by Red Robin waitstaff at South Center, Paul Constant? I read these names -- Sarah Waters -- Kiran Desei -- who? here's your real news.