The Booker goes bonkers

No, it doesn’t really. I was just trying to get your attention. Mean Bookie!

So, the 2010 Man Booker Prize longlist of 13 titles has been announced and the … nominees… are (dundahdahDAH!):

Peter Carey Parrot and Olivier in America (Faber and Faber)

Emma Donoghue Room (Pan MacMillan – Picador)

Helen Dunmore The Betrayal (Penguin – Fig Tree)

Damon Galgut In a Strange Room (Grove Atlantic – Atlantic Books)

Howard Jacobson The Finkler Question (Bloomsbury)

Andrea Levy The Long Song
(Headline Publishing Group – Headline Review)

Tom McCarthy C (Random House – Jonathan Cape)

David Mitchell The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet  (Hodder & Stoughton – Sceptre)

Lisa Moore February (Random House – Chatto & Windus)

Paul Murray Skippy Dies (Penguin – Hamish Hamilton)

Rose Tremain Trespass (Random House – Chatto & Windus)

Christos Tsiolkas The Slap (Grove Atlantic – Tuskar Rock)

Alan Warner The Stars in the Bright Sky
(Random House – Jonathan Cape)

Oh my! I haven’t read any of these! And I call myself a book reviewer … PAH! Though, in my saving grace, I do have a copy of the book that should win and yes I’m saying that even though I haven’t read it yet, but come on y’all it’s David Mitchell and that man is a fricken genius writer and one of the best of our time, and I have no problems stating that categorically, at all.

Inhale.

I have been holding off on reading The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet because I know it’s going to be brilliant and once you’ve read it… you’ve read it. You can’t ever read it for the first time again. Ever! And I’m waiting for just the right moment when I can sink into it and splash around like a duckling in a rain puddle on a summer’s day.

Plus the cover of the edition I have – she is gorgeous. I have reproduced it below in all it’s colour glory, but, oh! I cannot reproduce the way it feels, the slight gloss on the blue, the smell, the anticipation! I love this book like it’s an actual living, breathing thing… and that’s before I’ve read it. (Get that, e-book pushers? Yeah, you heard me.)