Bibliography, October 2025

BOTM: K. Rundell, The poisoned king (2025)

S. Choi, Flashlight (2025)
K. Desai, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny (2025)
G. Flood, An Introduction to Hinduism (2003)

K. Kitamura, Audition (2025)
B. Markovits, The Rest of Our Lives (2025)
A. Miller, The land in winter (2024)
R. Perlstein, The Invisible Bridge (2014)

C. Sheffield, Brother to Dragons (1992)
D. Szalay, Flesh (2025)

Katherine Rundell's book was published too late for the Booker, but it wouldn't have been nominated because it's for children. This is a shame, but it is unquestionably better than half of them, including the winner. It's not quite as good as Impossible Creatures, which was utterly enchanting, but it's still very very good. Like all good fantasy writers, she knows what she's doing with the genre, and she writes lightly and cleverly. My children were delighted to see a 6-7 reference in there too. She's paying attention.

It was also Booker month, so I've read them all. I'm writing this after we know the result, but I didn't know when I read them. It's not a vintage year I think. The depth of the list is far from superb. I woudl only really recommend reading half of them. The concepts behind Kitamura and Szalay I think flaws them as novels too much, and makes frustrating reading. While I'm don't feel they or Markovits had much to say. Desai and Choi were too long, though the core of both was good. I enjoyed them; I'd have enjoyed them more if they had been shorter. Miller was the best, and I think is a very well done miniature of life in a point of change in social and economic shift in the 60s, just before something happens. My ranking:

1. Miller
2. Desai
3. Choi
4. Markovits
5. Kitamura
6. Szalay

Bibliography, October 2024

BOTM: N. Leaman & B. Jones, Hitting against the spin (2021)

R. Adams, J. Sutphin & J. Sturm, Watership Down: The Graphic novel (2023)
M. Baer, The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars and Caliphs (2021)
J. Bate and R. Jackson (eds), Oxford illustrated history of Shakespeare on Stage (2001)
Ar. Bennett, The old wives' tale (1908)

P. Everett. James (2024)
P. Fitzgerald, The means of escape  (2000)
N. Gaiman, Sandman 01: Preludes and Nocturnes (1989)
A. Panshin, Rite of Passage (1969)
M. Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
P.G. Wodehouse, Piccadilly Jim (1917)

In my head, I've not read much about the Ottomans. I discover that this is the third general history of them that I have read. It was good, though it suffers from the normal Ottoman problem, which is that the first part up to Suleiman is way more exciting than the rest, and general histories never really analyse the shift. I need to read a more detailed account of the period between Lepanto and the Siege of Vienna.

That repeating pattern is true for a lot of this list. It covers a lot of typical reading sections for me. Bennett, Wodehouse, Gaiman were all reminders to do more of that. BOTM wasn't by authors I knew, but it's not the first cricket or stats book I've read. It was excellent and really effectively mined the vast amount of data we now have about cricket (and was good at telling about the growth of that data). I loved it.

I didn't really love the Booker shortlist. I read most of them last month, but saved James to the end because I loved Everett's previous novel. However I made the mistake of reading Huckleberry Finn first (which I didn't particularly like either). Despite what you might have been expecting: this is not a retelling and that annoyed me beyond all measure. If you want to use a text, then you have to engage with it, not just deviate from it dramatically about half way through. This is particularly true when the ending of Finn is so obviously the most problematic bit from Jim's perspective, and most fertile for reinterpretation. Ranking:

1. Orbital
2. The Safekeep
3. James
4. Stone Yard devotional
5. Creation Lake
6. Held

I do think Everett will win.

Bibliography, October 2023

BOTM: P. Lynch, Prophet Song (2023)

R. Adams, Trumpets of war (1987)
S. Bernstein, Study for Obedience (2023)

J. Escoffery, If I Survive You (2023)
P. Harding, This Other Eden (2023)
C. Maroo, Western Lane (2023)
P. Murray, The Bee Sting (2023)

J. Shapiro, 1606: the year of Lear (2015)

T. Shaw, The world of Escoffier (1994)

James Shapiro does not repeat the trick in his 1606 Shakespeare book that he did with his superlative one on 1599, but it is still good. I found it disjointed, though very good sections. Elsewhere, mostly Booker nominees, and it's a very frustrating list this year. All Booker debuts and that's probably unwise. Escoffery and especially Murray were just crying out for better endings and structure. In Paul Murray's case, it would have been better if he had just chopped the last quarter off the book entirely. Lynch's book ended well, though I don't think that's the best thing about it. It does require a leap of faith: it's st in an Ireland sliding into dictatorship and civil war, and it does precisely zero work on establishing how that happens. If you just buy that up front, it's a visceral and brutal exploration of how that is experienced and felt. It is not pleasant: it made my skin crawl. It's why I thought it was best. Its well written too.

If I've done the maths right, I've just tipped over the half way mark for all novels ever nominated for the Booker. 164 read; 163 to go. 2023 Booker ranking:

1. Lynch
2. Harding
3. Maroo
4. Escoffery
5. Bernstein
6. Murray

Bibliography, August 2023

J. Shapiro, 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (2005)

N. Cardus, Autobiography (1947)

I. Colegate, The Shooting Party (1980)
E. Donoghue, Room (2010)
P. Godfrey-Smith, Other minds (2017)
T. Judt, Postwar (2005)

A. Kwei Armah, The beautyful ones are not yet born (1968)
A. Levy, The long song (2010)
T. McCarthy, C (2010)

L. Osborne, The wet and the dry (2013)

I. Pears, The instance of the fingerpost (1998)

This was a great month. Three standout books for me and only one duffer (Tom McCarthy's 2010 Booker nominee isn't as bad as his 2015 nominee, but it is bad). Vastly better, and shamefully not nominated at the time, was The shooting party, a finely etched gem of a book littered with brilliant quotations. It may be my favourite novel of the year so far. It was also better than Tony Judt's great book on post war Britain, which wore its many pages lightly, and held the narrative and the analysis very well till about the mid 1990s, where recency trumped perspective. It's a triumph, though I do wish I had read it on publication. The world has changed.

Best of the lot, and rightly garlanded with the prizes, was, in its conception, a book that also emphasises the importance of time and place. Shapiro is marshalling a lot of academic work by others, and I don't know it well enough to tell where, but he is doing it brilliantly. The focus on a year is inspired and allows those of us not deep in the literary scholarship to anchor our understanding of what drives some of those key plays. This reading of Julius Caesar in the light of the wars of religion will stay with me forever. Despite what may seem from outside to be a narrow focus, this is in fact a hugely accessible book, which says its many things lightly and fluently. It's a pleasure to read.

As a result of this month's reading, I have now read the full 2010 Booker shortlist. It wasn't great. My ranking below, though 3 and 4 were much of a muchness:

1. Donoghue, Room
2. Galgut, In a strange room
3. Levy, The long song
4. Jacobson, The Finckler question 
5. Carey, Parrot and Oliver in America
6. McCarthy, C

Bibliography, September 2022

BOTM: D. Simmons, Hyperion (1989)

D. Athill, Alive, Alive Oh (2015)

N. Bulawayo, Glory (2022)
P.K. Dick, Lies Inc (2004)
P. Everett, The Trees (2022)
A. Garner, Treacle Walker (2021)
S. Karunatilaka, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (2022)
C. Keegan, Small things like these (2021)
J. Michener, Tales of the South Pacific (1947)
E. Strout, My name is Lucy Barton (2016)
E. Strout, Oh William! (2022)
D. Wolk, All of the Marvels (2021)

They weren't BOTM, but I loved Wolk's book on reading all the Marvel comics, and I loved Michener's Pulitzer prize winner behind South Pacific, and I loved Athill's clear eyed vignettes in her memoir.  I did not love most of the Booker shortlist. I thought it was one of the weakest I have ever read, though Everett's book is an exception. So all of those were great, but the best of all was Simmons multiple award winning Hyperion which is structurally engrossing (it advances the plot through a sequence of six single viewpoint narrative), literarily and historically clever (it integrates future and real history well and has some very nice references) and the plot and writing are compelling (and the ending bold). I believe the sequels are less good, but I feel they will take up most of my October.

2022 Booker ranking, and though I can only wholeheartedly recommend Everett, all of the top four were enjoyable. At the time of writing, the odds are almost a perfect inverse of this, so I have no idea who will actually win. Almost certain to be wrong:

1. Everett
2. Karunatilaka
3. Strout
4. Keegan
5. Bulawayo
6. Garner

Bibliography, October 2021

BOTM: M. Shipstead, Great circle (2021)

G. Tindall, The fields beneath (1977)
C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins (1938)
N. Gaiman, Norse mythology (2017)
P. Lively, Treasures of time (1979)
P. Lockwood, No-one is talking about this (2021)
M.S. Lovell, The Mitford Girls: The Biography of an Extraordinary Family (2001)
N. Mohamed, The fortune men (2021)
R. Powers, Bewilderment (2021)
B. Pym, Quartet in Autumn (1977)

A chance conversation with Anna revealed that she overwhelmingly reads books published since 2000. I do not: I've read 48 novels this year so far. Eight were published after 2000, and six of those were the Booker shortlist. In comparison, 17 were published before 1960. This seems reasonable to me. It would be a slightly weird position to believe that the majority of great literature was written in two decades when they've been writing good ones in volume for at least fifteen. This month, both Pym and Lively were really good novels: well observed, imaginatively done, and shining a light into stories less often told. Both are older than me. Non-fiction is usually more modern as the scholarship usually needs updating in a way a stories don't. Both Tindall's book on the history of Kentish Town and especially James' classic on Haiti have endured. The Black Jacobins is a product of Marxist theory, which does date it, but James is too good an historian to follow it blindly, and his analysis breaks free of ideology. It remains a shamefully neglected piece of history.

All that said, my favourite book this month was contemporary. I liked a lot of the Booker shortlist. Even Lockwood's sort of twitter one was not as bad as I thought. There were very funny bits. None were outstanding, but a number were decent. Best I thought was Shipstead's Great Circle which runs a strong, deep, central narrative around a female aviator (not a neglected subject) in the early age of flight. It has a secondary, parallel narrative that provides a lighter counterpart, which works really well. But the main narrative is the star - beautifully written, ranging over a wide canvas, and packing real punch at several points. It's not a masterpiece, but it's very good, and it was my favourite.

Rest of the Booker shortlist was tight. Mohamed (Second part) and Powers (first) both wrote very uneven books which, had they sustained them would have pushed them higher. Galgut, the favourite, I found underwhelming. My ranking:

1. Shipstead
2. Arudpragasam
3. Mohamed
4. Powers
5. Galgut
6. Lockwood

Bibliography, October 2020

BOTM:  M. Mengiste, The Shadow King (2019)

B. Carruthers, The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band (2011)
T. Dangarembga, Nervous conditions (1988)
-----------, The Book of Not (2006)
-----------, This Mournable Body (2020)
M. Engle,  A wrinkle in time (1962)
R. Kapuscinski, The Emperor (1978)
P. Lay, Providence lost (2020)
E. Orczy, The scarlet pimpernel (1905)

When the Booker shortlist came out, I agonised over whether to read all of Dangarembga's trilogy (the third was nominated). I'm so glad I did, because the original is overwhelmingly the best, and it's pretty clear that they've given the nod to book three (which is fine, but only fine) because they didn't give it to Nervous conditions. That was excellent, and I'd recommend stopping there. Book two is appallingly structured and while not without good scenes, pretty poor. I spent a bit of time deciding between Dangarembga and Mengiste for BOTM, but in the end I felt that the story in The Shadow King edged it. I am not firm in that conclusion, but it is an excellent book. The narrative flows nicely, the writing tidy and, impressively, simultaneously understated and horrifyingly evocative of the brutality its describing. It's deceptive in its approach, often seeming to be heading one way before shifting focus and direction - the shadow king in question, is a) pretty shadowy in plot and significance terms and b) not mentioned till halfway through the book. I'm going to read more of hers. 

No surprises then, that this is my preferred Booker winner. It was a pretty solid (if not outstanding) list though and I'd be unable to make a strong case for my rankings 2-4. As follows:

1. Mengiste
2. Stuart
3. Cook 
4. Taylor
5. Doshi
6. Dangarembga

I'm pretty uncertain who will win. It may well be Shuggie Bain, but I think they will want to push for a black voice in which case they may like Brian Taylor's Real Life. On balance, I ultimately think it will be The Shadow King, which would be my third in a row.

Bibliography, July 2020

BOTM: H. Mantel, Wolf Hall (2009)*

G.K. Chesterton, The innocence of Father Brown (1911)

E. David, English bread and yeast cookery (1977)

M. Edwards, The golden age of murder (2015)
S. Lewis, It can't happen here (1935)
H. Mantel, Bring up the bodies (2012)

H. Mantel, The mirror and the light (2020)
S. Marai, Embers (1942)
H. Metar, A month in Siena (2019)
C. Slocock, People Like Us (2018)

Lots of very good things in here. I liked Metar and Slocock a lot; and Lewis' 1930s fable of how America can slide into fascism - though it struggled with poor chronology - was compelling. However, their misfortune was to compete with a full read through of the Mantel trilogy which was pretty much as good as it's held to be. I had held back from reading the second in anticipation of reading the three of them. Given the time it has taken for the third to arrive, I could hardly remember the first, so I'm glad I did. On rereading, it was, just, the best, edging out the Mirror and the Light, essentially because I think it had to do the hard work of entering the Tudor world. Thousands of words have been written on all of them and I have nothing to add.

I assume the final volume will win the Booker. I'm not sure the second one should have. I felt Bring up the bodies was the weakest of the three, largely because of its structure, which was tightly built around the fall of Anne Boleyn. As a result, I think that meant we lost the broader immersion, and it had fewer standout passages of writing. Still good, but off a peak.

And so, with a heavy heart, I think that means Will Self should have had the 2012 Booker. My shortlist ranking. It was a fine year, though.

1. Self, Umbrella
2. Mantel, Bring up the Bodies
3. Tan, The Garden of Evening Mists
4. Thayil, Narcopolis
5. Moore, The Lighthouse
6. Levy, Swimming Home

Bibliography, January 2020

BOTM: T. Salih, Season of migration to the north (1966)

C. Birch, Jamrach's menagerie (2011)

M. Dinshaw, Outlandish Knight: life of Steven Runciman (2016)

E. Edugyan, Half blood blues (2011)

A. Forest, Autumn term (1948)

V. Franklin and A. Johnson, Menus that made history (2019)
S. Kelman, Pigeon English (2011)

J. Mahjoub, A line in the river (2018)

J. Ryle (ed.), The Sudan handbook (2015)

Lots of good stuff here. All of this was worthwhile, Edugyan and Kelman the best of the recent fiction (I'm back to the 2011 Booker shortlist). Two outstanding ones. Minoo Dinshaw's biography of Steven Runciman was absolutely delightful. It's a fantastic immersion into a world now gone, centred on Runciman himself, but illuminated by a vast cast of characters. Some of those are famous; some are now obscure, but deftly realised without losing the thread of Runciman's own life. It's a triumph. It is edged out however, by Tayeb Salih's short novel about the impact British influence had on the Sudanese. That sounds much drier than it is. It's a tight evocative piece looking at both Sudanese village life as it enters post-colonial 'modernity' and the experience of the African in early and mid twentieth century Britain. It also has a pleasing amount of drama and plot. It's a very good use of 169 pages.

And my ranking for the 2011 Booker shortlist is now complete. I think they got this right, though my memory of Barnes is imperfect. The commentators were also right: this was a poor list, with half of them being not really up to par. The top three were good, though not outstanding.

1. Barnes, Sense of an Ending
2. Edugyan, Half blood blues
3. Kelman, Pigeon English
4. Miller, Snowdrops
5.  Birch, Jamrach's menagerie
6. The Sisters Brothers

Bibliography, October 2019

BOTM: B. Wilson, The way we eat now (2019)

M. Atwood, The Testaments (2019)
M. Atwood, The handmaid's tale (1985)
E.M. Brent-Dyer, The new house at the chalet school (1935)
B. Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other (2019)
C. Obioma, An orchestra of minorities (2019)
J. Paxman, The political animal (2002)
S. Rushdie, Quichotte (2019)
E. Shafak, 10 minutes, 38 seconds in this strange world (2019)

I love Bee Wilson's work. I think she writes well and has exceptionally interesting things to say. I need to read the lot. This is fascinating on our food culture (and depressing, particularly as I write this just after Halloween). Like all books of this kind, it makes me want to make bread, but it also makes we want to think more about a much wider range of foods (and drinks). Read it; and read her Consider the fork as well, which is even better.

It probably would have been book of the month anyway, but it wasn't really challenged by this years' Booker shortlist, which was weak. I agreed with the judges (I am ignoring the sentimental award to Atwood, which was emphatically not deserved), and thought Evaristo was the best. It was engaging, nicely phrased and vocalised from its various viewpoints. And I thought it managed the contradictions and and problems of its narrators well. There's a cute, semi-twist in a final coda that I quite liked, but some didn't. I don't think it matters very much. Of the others, it was tight between Shafak and Obioma, and I applaud the ambition of Ellmann. Rushdie and Atwood felt tired and shadows of the former selves. I reread the Handmaid's tale after this, which I liked a lot more than I did first time round, and just served to show how pedestrian the sequel is.

My ranking.

1. Evaristo
2. Shafak
3. Obioma
4. Ellmann
5. Atwood
6. Rushdie

Bibliography, December 2018

BOTM: J. Lahiri, The Lowland (2013)

N. Bulawayo, We need new names (2013)

D. Cadbury, The dinosaur hunters (2000)

S. Cooper, The Dark is rising (1973)

S. Hill, Howards End is on the Landing (2010)*

L. de Lisle, The white king (2018)
R. Ozeki, A Tale for the time being (2013)
A. Patchett, State of wonder (2011)
E. Ruete, Memoirs of an Arabian princess from Zanzibar (1868)
C. Toibin, Testament of Mary (2013)
P.G. Wodehouse, Sunset at Blandings (1977)
E. Zola, L'Assommoir (1877)
S. Zweig, Genius and Discovery: Five Historical Miniatures (1927 and 1940. New translation 2016)

Perhaps fittingly, Susan Hill's book about rereading, which I remember being underwhelmed by the first time I read it, I loved this time. For a while, I thought it would get book of the month, but I had a late surge of reading while in Wales. Astute readers will note that much of that surge was the remains of the 2013 Booker shortlist, which they really did get wrong, but has definitely confirmed me in my intention to read all the shortlists. Best of that remaining list and best of this month's reading was The Lowland. The write up isn't promising - it's plot is triggered by the Naxalite rebellion in India, but plays out in a domestic apartment in Rhode Island - but it's a cracking story and gently, wistfully, sad, though with shocking moments. It's a reminder too of the complex stories around each individual migration, and in this case especially about identity and obligation.

The surge also means I can give a definitive ranking of the 2013 Booker shortlist. Although they got the ranking wrong, it was a good list, with only Toibin's terrible Testament of Many undeserving of a place. My ranking:

1. Crace
2. Lahiri
3. Catton
4. Ozeki
5. Bulawayo
6. Toibin

Bibliography, October 2018

BOTM: R. Powers, The Overstory (2018)

P. Bayard, Who killed Roger Ackroyd? (1998)

F. Butler-Gallie, A field guide to the English Clergy (2018)

B. Chambers, A long way to a small angry planet (2015)
E. Edugyan, Washington Black (2018)

A. Fraser, The king and the catholics (2018)
R. Kushner, The Mars Room (2018)

T. Marshall, Prisoners of Geography (2015)

S. Moss, Chocolate: A Global History (2009)
Y. Maxtone Grahame, Terms and conditions: girls' boarding schools 1939-79 (2018)
R. Robertson, The Long take (2018) 

Triumphant in my Booker preferences (making my agreement with the Booker jury about 50% ), it makes no difference to this month's top book as Milkman was the first one I read, hence in September. It lost out to Lincoln. The Overstory was great though and not just for hippies. The opening sequence of vignettes was a masterclass in condensed storytelling. The later plot-driven aspects weren't perfect, but were compelling and real. I think it's a worthy winner this month, but I did almost give BOTM to Maxtone Graham, whose book I loved, probably more than I should. As well as being fascinating in its own right, it's a reminder about how unfathomable the country was even a few decades ago.

Here's my Booker shortlist ranking. Everything pretty good save the last, which wasn't without merit, but I felt much too clumsy:

1. Burns

2. Powers
(daylight)

3. Kushner

4. Robertson

5. Edugyan

6. Johnson

Bibliography, September 2017

BOTM: T. Piketty, Capital in the 21st century (2013)

P. Auster, 4 3 2 1 (2017)
E. Fridlund, History of Wolves (2017)

M. Hamid, Exit West (2017)
P. Lock, The Franks in the Aegean: 1204-1500 (1995)

F. Mozley, Elmet (2017)
G. Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo  (2017)
A. Smith, Autumn (2017)

I gave myself a few extra days to finish Auster so I could fit the whole Booker shortlist in one month, especially as - miracle of miracles - it's before the announcement of the winner. He seems to have written (very nicely; and in far too many words) Sliding Doors - it was a lot better than I'd feared and it's certainly my favourite Auster (this is easy; I hate pretty much everything else of his I've read). 

Overall, it was a pretty good Booker list, with only Ali Smith really not up to it - her Brexit stuff was extremely clumsy. Everyone says Lincoln in the Bardo is going to win, but I thought it was nowhere near as clever or profound as everyone else, and the citations seem to be trying to make the same point as GCSE History about unreliable evidence. I had a few issues with Hamid because the high concept sneaks up on you, but then I thought it was great. The start especially is very good. Mozley also sagged slightly in the middle, but was genuinely gripping and a rare evocation of a raw, less civilised, world, just occasionally poking through the cracks of ours. It wasn't cheery, but it was powerful. It was my favourite.

Ranked as below:

1. Mozley
2. Hamid
3. Auster
4. Saunders
5. Fridlund
6. Smith

Not one of them made BOTM. That was Piketty, which I loved. It's not the book I expected it to be at all. It's got hard, real data in. I've referred to it in endless conversations already and I expect to keep coming back to it. It has flaws - its policy solutions are weaker than the analysis - but the good bits (which is most of it) are very very good. The data should be essential reading for any wider discussion about inequality and wealth. It won't be.

Bibliography, November 2016

BOTM: H. Jeffreys, Empire of Booze (2016)

J. Bloodworth, The myth of meritocracy (2016)
D. Brown, The American West (1994)
J. Crace, The Pesthouse (2007)
A. Huxley, Antic Hay (1923)
D. Levy, Hot Milk (2016)

I was surprised by most of this list. Levy, rounding off the Booker shortlist, was surprisingly good - especially as the synopsis sounded dire. Huxley, Bloodworth and Brown all disappointed. Jim Crace didn't, but he never does.

There were no surprises around Book of the Month. I came across Henry Jeffreys in Slightly Foxed (which is also brilliant) some years ago, and he's been a great discovery, not least because he comes from my home town. More importantly, he has an excellent, accessible and interesting drinks blog. Now, he's written an amazing book, which I helped fund - in somewhat bizarre company. Now, given this, and the fact it's about two of my favourite things, Empire and Booze, I was bound to like it. But it is also excellently written, fascinating, practical, and makes good use of amusing footnotes. What more could anyone ask for?

In other news, my definitive Booker ranking this year

1. Beatty
2. Thien
3. Levy
4. Moshfegh
5. Macrae Burnet
6. Szalay

Bibliography, November 2015

BOTM: H. Yanagihara, A little life

P. Fitzgerald, The bookshop

I. Watson (ed.), The Mammoth book of alternate histories

It took me twenty five days to read A little life, partly because of childcare but mostly because it was such hard going. It was however worth it. It's been controversial and the plot issues are real, but it was haunting, beautiful and so sad. The writing was also excellent. Although it's been described as grim, and there are passages I physically flinched at, I think it finishes well. It was robbed of the Booker.

Edit. My final Booker 2015 rankings are thus below. McCarthy was terrible:

1. Yanagihara
2. James
3. Tyler
4. Sahota
5. Obioma
6. McCarthy

Bibliography, October 2014 (Booker edition)

BOTM: E. Waugh, Men at Arms

J. Ferris, To rise again at a decent hour

K.J. Fowler, We are all completely beside ourselves 

H. Jacobson, J
N. Mukerjee, The lives of others
A. Smith, How to be both
E. Waugh, Helena
E. Waugh, Officers and Gentlemen
E. Waugh, Unconditional Surrender
M Zusak, The Book Thief

&, for completeness but not actually finished till November, R. Flanagan, The narrow road to the deep north 

This has become a bit difficult. I delayed this because - for the first time ever - I've managed to read all the Booker shortlist. Unlike last year, they appear to have been right. So, Flanagan would have been BOTM had it been in the month, but it wasn't. Anyway, It's still difficult to award pick a favourite then because I can't really call out which one of Evelyn Waugh's war trilogy is the best. The last one is the nicest to read because it gets resolved, but I think it's the first one that does what it does best, though that may be because I found the great character of the mad brigadier (Ritchie - Hook) more amenable than the monstrous Ludovic who stalks Officers and Gentlemen. The trilogy, it goes without saying, is magnificent.

For the record, I'd rank the Booker shortlist as follows: 1. Flanagan, 2.Fowler, 3. Mukerjee, 4. Ferris, 5. Smith, 6. Jacobson. If I could have read just the first half of Ferris or the second half of Ali Smith (in my version, the modern story), they'd have done better.