Booker, Tea & the MGs

For some odd reason the Man Booker mob have shortlisted 13 novels instead of last year's 19. Makes the task of the obsessive Booker completist slightly easier, at least, although Abbey's only had 5 of them on Sunday, not counting On Chesil Beach.

And natch, a nagging incentive to fire up the world's least read blog one more time. So I brought The Reluctant Fundamentalist and The Gathering with me to Johannesburg, but can't really start them until I've finished John Gray's extraordinary Straw Dogs.


Long List
Nicola Barker: Darkmans (4th Estate)
Edward Docx: Self Help (Picador)
Tan Twan Eng: The Gift of Rain (Myrmidon)
Anne Enright: The Gathering (Jonathan Cape)
Mohsin Hamid: The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Hamish Hamilton)
Peter Ho Davies: The Welsh Girl (Sceptre)
Lloyd Jones: Mister Pip (John Murray)
Nikita Lalwani: Gifted (Viking)
Ian McEwan: On Chesil Beach (Jonathan Cape)
Catherine O'Flynn: What Was Lost (Tindal Street)
Michael Redhill: Consolation (William Heinemann)
Indra Sinha: Animal's People (Simon and Schuster)
AN Wilson: Winnie & Wolf (Hutchinson)