The Booker Prize - long list

The Longlist's out

The Booker prize judges have settled on:

• Richard Flanagan – The Narrow Road to the Deep North
• Paul Kingsnorth – The Wake
• Niall Williams – History of the Rain
• Richard Powers – Orfeo
• David Nichols – Us
• Howard Jacobson – J
• David Mitchell – The Bone Clocks
• Siri Hustvedt – The Blazing World
• Joshua Ferris – To Rise Again at a Decent Hour
• Karen joy Fowler – We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
• Ali Smith – How to be Both
• Joseph O'Neill – The Dog
• Neel Mukhurjee – The lives of Others

Apart from Howard Jacobson (almost everything) and David mitchel (Cloud Atlas), these are all new to me. Unless Joseph O'Neill is MM's mate who's career has taken an unexpected turn. That's absolutely wonderful, because the annual (usually partially successful but aborted) attempt at the long list; and the following (usually completed) read through the short list is normally pretty rewarding.

Thankfully the board of judges that wanted to dumb the Booker down to sub-reality TV levels haven't left a lasting impression (at least not a good one) and there's been no repeat of Stella Rimington's bad influence. Quite what the selection committee were thinking about that year beats me.

I'm looking forward to the David Mitchell and the Howard Jacobson on past experience, and eager to get started reading the others, because experience suggests that there's going to be some real gems and some new authors with back catalogues to dig into.

If you're a betting type – the bookies are normally pretty good at predicting the Booker, and the favourite or second favourite normally scoop the prize.

Lunatics running asylums

They've put the guys who profit from killing bees in charge of save the bees research.

Blimey.

Unbelievable. If that's true, why, then:

Next we'll have a climate change denying badger killer running the environment, and a paedo heading up the anti-paedo initiative.

Then we'll have government commissioned scientific research that simply gets ignored if it does not agree with what they're hell-bent on doing in any case.

You could even have the companies and individuals paid to write the long, needlessly complicated and intricate tax laws left free to earn huge fees from the big corporations for the inside info on exactly how to dodge those taxes.

Oh.

Right.