The Sunday Salon... The Man Booker Prize, What's on That list Anyway?

Hey, it's Sunday! Welcome to The Sunday Salon! Pull up a chair, grab a cup of joe and relax among the stacks of books that sit high around you in the virtual reading room we all gather together in once a week, the place where we chat about something we all love - books and reading! It was a busy week here in Connecticut and I wanted to chat about The Man Booker Prize, but never got a chance, so today I thought we'd take a look at the longlist and a closer look at a few of those books that are screaming for a little more attention...

So, what is The Man Booker Prize? "The Man Booker Prize promotes the finest in fiction by rewarding the very best book of the year." Some refer to The Man Booker Prize as the UK's version of the Pulitzer Prize. In 1968 a company by the name of Booker-McConnell began sponsoring the event. Originally known as the Booker-McConnell Prize, it became commonly known as the "Booker Prize". In 2002, the administration of the prize was transferred to the Booker Prize Foundation, and the sponsor became the investment company Man Group, which kept "Booker" as part of the official title of the prize, but added Man, and now we have The Man Booker Prize. It's a prestigious award, garnering the winner an amazing amount of press & promotion and can literally make an author's career! And yes, there's a bit of money along with all that fame... 50,000 British pounds, (or almost $80,000).

The Rules of The Man Booker Prize...

• Any full-length novel, written by a citizen of the Commonwealth (Commonwealth of Nations), the Republic of Ireland or Zimbabwe, and published in the United Kingdom for the first time in the year of the prize is eligible.
• Authors must be living at the time of the award.
• Self published books are not eligible.
• Novel must be written originally in English, translations are not eligible.
• All entries must be published in the United Kingdom between the required dates, but previous publication of a book outside the UK does not disqualify it.
• For this years prize, all books must be published in the UK between 1 October 2009 and 30 September 2010.

On July 27th, The Man Booker Prize Longlist, or The Man Booker Dozen, were announced! Here's the list...

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

Room by Emma Donoghue (Pan MacMillan - Picador)

The Betrayal by Helen Dunmore (Penguin - Fig Tree)

In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut (Grove Atlantic - Atlantic Books)

The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson (Bloomsbury)

The Long Song by Andrea Levy (Headline Publishing Group )

C by Tom McCarthy (Random House - Jonathan Cape)

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

February by Lisa Moore (Random House - Chatto & Windus)

Skippy Dies by Paul Murray (Penguin - Hamish Hamilton)

Trespass by Rose Tremain (Random House - Chatto & Windus)

The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas (Grove Atlantic - Tuskar Rock)

The Stars in the Bright Sky by Alan Warner (Random House)

The shortlist, consisting of 6 of these books, will be announced September 7th! Which books will be on that list? Right after the announcement of the longlist, The Guardian shared where the bookies were placing their bets: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell is the favorite at 9:2 odds.

Here are three of those long listed books that caught my eye and are on my wish list...

The Long Song by Andrea Levy... The story of the last turbulent years of slavery and the early years of freedom in 19th century America. Told in the irresistibly willful and intimate voice of Miss July, with some editorial assistance from her son, Thomas, The Long Song is at once defiant, funny, and shocking. The child of a field slave on the Amity sugar plantation, July lives with her mother until Mrs. Caroline Mortimer, a recently transplanted English widow, decides to move her into the great house and rename her “Marguerite.” Resourceful and mischievous, July soon becomes indispensable to her mistress. Together they live through the bloody Baptist war, followed by the violent and chaotic end of slavery. Taught to read and write so that she can help her mistress run the business, July remains bound to the plantation despite her “freedom.” It is the arrival of a young English overseer, Robert Goodwin, that will dramatically change life in the great house for both July and her mistress. Prompted and provoked by her son’s persistent questioning, July’s resilience and heartbreak are gradually revealed in this extraordinarily powerful story of slavery, revolution, freedom, and love. Read an Excerpt from Andrea Levy's website. *Hey, This Book is Kindle Ready!

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell... The year is 1799, the place Dejima in Nagasaki Harbor, the “high-walled, fan-shaped artificial island” that is the Japanese Empire’s single port and sole window onto the world, designed to keep the West at bay; the farthest outpost of the war-ravaged Dutch East Indies Company; and a de facto prison for the dozen foreigners permitted to live and work there. To this place of devious merchants, deceitful interpreters, costly courtesans, earthquakes, and typhoons comes Jacob de Zoet, a devout and resourceful young clerk who has five years in the East to earn a fortune of sufficient size to win the hand of his wealthy fiancée back in Holland. But Jacob’s original intentions are eclipsed after a chance encounter with Orito Aibagawa, the disfigured daughter of a samurai doctor and midwife to the city’s powerful magistrate. The borders between propriety, profit, and pleasure blur until Jacob finds his vision clouded, one rash promise made and then fatefully broken. The consequences will extend beyond Jacob’s worst imaginings. As one cynical colleague asks, “Who ain’t a gambler in the glorious Orient, with his very life?” Ok, maybe the bookies are right about this one. This book sounds like it would be a great read, and I am always up for reading a book that takes place in the setting of Japan. Read an Excerpt at ThousandAutumns.com. Hey, This book is Kindle Ready!

Skippy Dies by Paul Murray... Why Skippy dies and what happens next is the subject of this dazzling and uproarious novel, unraveling a mystery that links the boys of Seabrook College to their parents and teachers in ways nobody could have imagined. With a cast of characters that ranges from hip-hop-loving fourteen-year-old Eoin “MC Sexecutioner” Flynn to basketballplaying midget Philip Kilfether, packed with questions and answers on everything from Ritalin, to M-theory, to bungee jumping, to the hidden meaning of the poetry of Robert Frost, Skippy Dies is a heartfelt, hilarious portrait of the pain, joy, and occasional beauty of adolescence, and a tragic depiction of a world always happy to sacrifice its weakest members. This books sounds like a modern day Catcher in the Rye, and sounds like a great departure from the normal "serious" literary novels usually found on these lists. This book will be released in the US August 31st! Hey, This Book will be Kindle Ready!

A few of the long listed books have gotten a lot of great buzz before The Man Booker Prize... The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas, which is a story about the consequences of "slapping" someone else's child while disciplining them and sounds like a very current storyline, and Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey, which is a story of friendship & adventure between an aristocrat and his servant as they depart for the new world. Maybe a buddy story? Have you read any of the books in the long list? Share your likes and dislikes! I love The Man Booker Prize! There are so many great new books to discover with the lists each year, and that's why this Prize is so coveted - winning this Prize will sell books. Last year's winner for The Man Booker Prize was Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, which is historical fiction and mixes fact with fiction during the 16th century and treats the reader to Henry VIII, Kathryn of Aragon, the Boleyn Sisters from the perspective of Thomas Cromwell. Wolf Hall is due out in paperback August 31st, and is of course, Kindle Ready now!

You can find out all the scoop about the Man Booker Prize at the manbookerprize.com. While you're there you can also find all the past winners. You can also find great coverage of the long listed books at The Guardian UK. In the meantime, I hope you found some great reading for yourself!

Happy Reading... Suzanne

Sunday Salon... Books with Buzz and A Kindle related gift

What is the Sunday Salon? Imagine some university library's vast reading room. It's filled with people--students and faculty and strangers who've wandered in. They're seated at great oaken desks, books piled all around them, and they're all feverishly reading and jotting notes in their leather-bound journals as they go. Later they'll mill around the open dictionaries and compare their thoughts on the afternoon's literary intake....

One of those very busy weeks, with a few trips to the vet for my reading companion BJ (he doesn't do any of the reading though, he just listens..), but now he seems to be on the road to recovery, with a course of rest and anti-inflammatory drugs. So in between reading doggie 'health books', there have been quite a few "Books with Buzz" to talk about this week... and I'll be making up for my lack of reviews this past week, this coming week! For now though here are a few notable books to put on your TBR list!...

The Weight of Silence by Heather Gudenkauf. "It happens quietly one August morning. As dawn's shimmering light drenches the humid Iowa air, two families awaken to find their little girls have gone missing in the night. Seven-year-old Calli Clark is sweet, gentle, a dreamer who suffers from selective mutism brought on by tragedy that pulled her deep into silence as a toddler. Calli's mother, Antonia, tried tobe the best mother she could within the confines of marriage to a mostly absent, often angry husband. Now, though she denies that her husband could be involved in the possible abductions, she fears her decision to stay in her marriage has cost her more than her daughter's voice. Petra Gregory is Calli's best friend, her soul mate and her voice. But neither Petra nor Calli has been heard from since their disappearance was discovered. " So much good talk about this book. A few people I know who have read it were drawn in immediately to the story and couldn't put it down. So, this is on my TBR list and I think it's going to be on quite a few 'must read lists' in the coming months.

The Magicians by Lev Grossman "Quentin Coldwater is brilliant but miserable. He's a senior in high school, and a certifiable genius but he's still secretly obsessed with a series of fantasy novels he read as a kid, about the adventures of five children in a magical land called Fillory. Compared to that, anything in his real life just seems gray and colorless. Everything changes when Quentin finds himself unexpectedly admitted to a very secret, very exclusive college of magic in upstate New York, where he receives a thorough and rigorous education in the practice of modern sorcery. He also discovers all the other things people learn in college: friendship, love, sex, booze, and boredom. But something is still missing. Magic doesn't bring Quentin the happiness and adventure he thought it would. Then, after graduation, he and his friends make a stunning discovery: Fillory is real." This book has been described as 'Harry Potter discovers Narnia is real' and is suppose to be an adult story book. Lot's and lots of positive buzz for this book! A homage to Harry P. For all of us who miss reading about Harry this might fit the bill, but with more of an adult twist here and there.

The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt. Thanks to the Man Booker Prize longlist I read about and was intrigued by this book. "Olive Wellwood is a famous writer, interviewed with her children gathered at her knee. For each, she writes a private book, bound in its own colour and placed on a shelf. In their rambling house near Romney Marsh the children play in a storybook world - but their lives, and those of their rich cousins and friends, are already inscribed with mystery. Each family carries its own secrets. Born at the end of the Victorian era and growing up in the golden summers of Edwardian times, a whole generation grew up unaware of the darkness ahead; in their innocence, they were betrayed unintentionally by the adults who loved them." The saga of the families plays out in the changing times of the culture and we are swept away with them... The change of life from the victorian times to the more 'progressive' edwardian times.

Ok, now a little something for your Kindle.... (also meant for books too!)

A Kindle friendly present... Have you ever tried to lean your Kindle against something to read it hands free. To have it stand up while you're lying down? Well, I bought a Peeramid BookRest, a kind of pyramid shape pillow with a ledge to rest your book and a tassel bookmark to keep your page. But I thought my Kindle would fit perfect on that little ledge and it sure did. Use it on the floor, on your lap, etc. It comes in a lot of colors and a few different material choices. It looks like a throw pillow when not it use... Click on the link above to go directly to the Peeramid's website....

I ordered mine from Amazon.com, but if you do a google search for Peeramid Bookrest there are quite a few places that sell them. They retail between $32 and $40 depending on the fabric.

I hoped I peaked your interest a little here! Don't forget there are some great giveaways going on and next week there will be a couple more interesting giveaways. One of which is going to be international! So keep in touch, tell me what books you're reading this week! And if you have a furry pal at home give him or her a big hug!

Happy reading...

Suzanne