Better than a Booker/ Nicer than a Nobel

Work started this week on a new town inspired by a novel. The most famous work of Yugoslavian writer Ivo Andrić (who did actually win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1961)  is The Bridge on the Drina, written during WWII. Across three centuries the Bridge is a witness to continuing conflict  in the small Bosnian town of Višegrad.

"From this bridge spreads fanlike the whole rolling valley with the little oriental town of Višegrad and all its surroundings, with hamlets nestling in the folds of the hills, covered with meadows, pastures and plum-orchards, and criss-crossed with walls and fences and dotted with shaws and occasional clumps of evergreens. Looked at from a distance through the broad arches of the white bridge it seems as if one can see not only the green Drina, but all that fertile and cultivated countryside and the southern sky above."

The new town is tiny and will be built inside Višegrad. I'm not quite sure how that will work out, but with its museum, library, theatre and memorial it is going to be a wonderful tribute to a writer.Click on the title of this post to read the full story.

Beryl gets her Booker

Novelist Beryl Bainbridge became a Dame (which never sounds nearly as dashing as the male equivalent) but never won the Booker despite being nominated a record five times. 
1973 The Dressmaker was shortlisted but was beaten by JG Farrell's The Siege of Krishnapur.
1974 The Bottle Factory Outing was a contender but the joint winners were Nadine Gordimer for The Conservationist and Stanley Middleton for Holiday.
1990  An Awfully Big Adventure was listed but  the prize went to AS Byatt for Possession.  
1996 Every Man For Himself was beaten by Graham Swift's Last Orders 
1998, Master Georgie was shortlisted the year  Ian McEwan won with Amsterdam.
Beryl died last summer which means that her final novel The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress, to be published sometime this summer, won't be considered for the prize as the rules say it can't be awarded posthumously. 
But Man Booker are making amends by organinsing the Best of Beryl prize, decided by public vote, which pits her five shortlisted novels against one another. 
Voting starts today and you can have your say by clicking on the title of this post.

The winning title will be announced at a ceremony in April. 

Luck and the Booker

Work and a coughing not-quite-flu-but-feels-almost-as bad cold stopped me from posting straight after the Booker was announced. I was though able to follow events by Twitter. Miss Daisy Frost sent out tweets every few minutes from her table positioned on the frontline, commenting on the lamb dinner and the pallor of the short list nominees. 

Howard Jacobson's novel The Finkler Question, is the first funny book to have won and I wonder if that is a reflection of the times. When there is trouble ahead perhaps the only sensible thing to do is laugh.

Reading the newspapers and blogs such as The Literary Saloon I discovered a couple of surprising things about the way books are selected for consideration by the Booker judges (138 titles this year - some years it is a lot less).

Publishers can only submit two books but the judges can "call books in". It sounds very informal and haphazard. 

Jacobson's book was called in. Did that mean his publishers didn't put it forward themselves because they didn't think it would win? Or were they gambling on the Judges choosing it anyway (he has been long listed twice before) and they wanted to use their two book quota on something that might not otherwise come to the panel's attention? 

The Daily Telegraph says that Emma Donoghue's Room only came to be on the short list because one of the Booker judges went to a party and heard someone praising it a lot. Next day it was "called in".

I suppose the lesson to draw from that is never ever underestimate the power of word of mouth recommendations. 

Or luck.

Bookies worried about the Booker

I love the talk generated by the annual book award. Books should be the subject of debate and news stories and, yes, why not, betting. Books matter. 

For the first time last year the favourite won the Booker - Hiliary Mantel's Wolf Hall - and Graham Sharpe at William Hill bookmakers says they are worried the same thing could happen again with Tom McCarthy's novel C which is the "heaviest backed Booker book ever". It has been given shorter odds than the 2009 winner.

I haven't been able to check this out, but I am pretty sure  Graham was the man who started this kind of betting in the first place because he reckoned that the publicity generated was the kind of advertising that money couldn't buy... (met him years ago when my husband was at The Sporting Life) 

I admit I haven't yet read any of the shortlist this year but I love Peter Carey's writing and I'd be delighted for him to win for the third time, but Emma Donohue's Room is definitely on my to-read  list. 

The winner will be announced tonight at the Guildhall in London, with the successful author collecting a £50,000 prize.

Booker Shortlist offers

The short list was announced yesterday and the news is that it's a feel good list for these dark, depressing days.  So if you always said you'd read them all before the winner is announced (October 12th) maybe this is the year to do it. Here they are

Peter Carey Parrot and Olivier in America
Emma Donoghue Room
Damon Galgut In a Strange Room 
Howard Jacobson The Finkler Question
Andrea Levy The Long Song
Tom McCarthy C

If you live in an Apple house (and gradually our's is becoming more Apple inclined after years of resistance - current tally one big glossy computer, one less glossy Macbook and a very precious iPod)  The Man Booker Prize App is now free to download from the App Store to an Apple iPhone or iPod Touch and is the UK's first app for a literary prize. I'm not sure what you do with it - my technical understanding is way behind the gadgets lying around - but I am guessing that you get extracts and other goodies. 

READ IRELAND (a kind of Irish Amazon but more cuddly) has a special offer. Order three shortlisted books and they will send them anywhere in the world free of charge.  Order them all and you also get  10% discount. And because it's READ IRELAND and not Amazon and you get the feeling that they've read the books they're selling and like them, you are allowed to substitute one or more of the books left languishing on the long list. (It's happened to me and I know how it feels: you get invited to the party but no one remembers who you are...early night.) Click on the title of this post to go to READ IRELAND'S website. I haven't any connection with them - just bought a few books over the years and like their reviews on the regular email newsletter.

Lucky Booker longlist

It's Friday 13th - an unlucky don't-go-out day for the superstitious - but it was reported this morning that the 13 books on the Booker long list are doing pretty well. Sales are up on previous years - you have to go back to 2001 for them to be better when Ian McEwan's Atonement and Philip Pullman's The Amber Spyglass were contenders.
So, that's cheering news. Times are hard but people still want new stories. It's a basic human need. As soon as we learn to walk, we dance; as soon as we can grab a crayon or stick of charcoal from the fire we draw and as soon as we have words, we tell stories and listen to them... 

Christos Tsiolkas' The Slap is the most popular book on the long list - set in Melbourne, it's been described as a satanic version of Neighbours.

The winner - announced in October - will receive £50,000, while the five runners-up will each receive £2,500 each.