Howard Jacobson has just won the 2010 Booker Prize for The Finkler Question. This is the second year running that my least favourite book from the short list has won. I just didn’t find The Finkler Question funny and couldn’t even bring myself to finish it.
The Finkler Question – Howard Jacobson 
(DNF)
Next year I highly recommend that you all place bets on my least favourite book from the short list – you’ll probably have a very high chance of winning lots of money!
Having attempted to read the Booker short list I should be in a good position to predict who will win, but unfortunately that isn’t the case. I think the field is wide open this year and I wouldn’t be surprised to see any of the books scoop the prize. Unlike previous years there is no clear winner, with each book appealing to a very different reading taste.
The six books are:
My reviews:
In a Strange Room – Damon Galgut 
In trying to predict the winner I think the most important thing is to look at the reading tastes of each of the judges.
The five judges for the 2010 Booker Prize are:
The judges are being quite quiet about their favourite Bookers, but I spotted Andrew Motion admitting that Jacobson was “laugh-aloud funny” and Rosie Blau describing C as “a novel blazing with energy and, for all its postmodern ambitions, a rich, old-fashioned yarn”
Frances Wilson’s favourite book is Persuasion, but I’m not sure that helps us to decide which of the short list she’ll enjoy the most. If I had to guess then I’d say this would point towards her favouring the more conventional narratives of The Long Song or Room, but it is hard to say from that one tiny clue!
Tom Sutcliffe wrote that “literary merit (and literary pleasure) really lies….not in the plotlines but the lines of writing themselves” so I suspect that he will favour Peter Carey’s lyrical prose.
That just leaves Deborah Bull who is surprisingly quiet on the Internet about the type of books she likes.
All this detective work has yielded little of value, but I am convinced that for such a varied short list to have been produced each of the judges must have a very different taste in books. This means that it is unlikely they will be able to reach a unanimous decision about who should win the Booker Prize. They have already admitted that they used a points system to determine who should make the long list and I suspect they will have to use this system to generate a winner. I think this will favour C and The Long Song, as they are more likely to appear higher on every-one’s list, unlike books the others which seem to create a love:hate divide among readers.
There has been speculation that the Faber influence could lead Carey to victory, but I’m sure the judges will only be looking at the merits of each book.
If I had to place a bet then I’d put my money on C, but I was amused by this article that thinks it should miss out on the Booker Prize due to a lack of gardening knowledge!
The simple answer is that I have no idea who will win the Booker Prize. All the books have their own merits and each has its group of supporters. I’m just happy that in reading the long list I have been introduced to many wonderful new books.
I look forward to seeing who will be revealed as the 2010 Booker winner tonight.
Who do you think will win?
All winners were chosen using random.org and have been notified by email.
Congratulations to those who won and commiserations to those who weren’t lucky this time.
Enjoy the rest of your weekend!
10 limited edition copies to give away to readers of my blog.
These special books each have a unique identifier which enables you to log onto the Hand Me Down World Website. The idea is that each lucky recipient of the book will read it, leave their thoughts on the website and then hand it onto someone else. The journey of each book will be mapped and so the globe will hopefully become criss-crossed with the paths that copies of this book have made.
If you’d like to know a bit more about Hand Me Down World then I highly recommend that you watch this short video in which Lloyd Jones explains the plot and how he came to write it.
For a chance to read this book before its publication, please leave a comment below before 11am GMT on Friday 8th October.
This giveaway is open INTERNATIONALLY!!
Winners will be chosen at random and revealed on this blog shortly after the closing date.
Good Luck!
September was a very slow reading month for me. I had several weekends away and I was so busy with various other projects that the month just flew by. I only managed to finish 9 books, which I think is a record low for me. I did manage to get a fair way through a few chunksters though, so hopefully my October tally will be larger.
Books Reviewed in September:
Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro 
The Elephant’s Journey – José Saramago 
In a Strange Room – Damon Galgut
The Finkler Question – Howard Jacobson (DNF)
Waiting for Columbus – Thomas Trofimuk (DNF)
I failed to make much of an indent on my September plans and so most have the books have been transferred straight from that list to this one:
Stonehenge: A Novel of 2000 BC – Bernard Cornwall
All My Friends are Superheroes – Andrew Kaufman
Stone in a Landslide – Muriel Barbal
I plan to join My Friend Amy’s Lonesome Dove readalong. I’ve had this chunkster on my shelf for far too long so it will be really nice to share the reading experience with lots of other bloggers.
I’m also currently working my way through The Dark Side of Love
On top of these I will also be working my way through a few more of Richard and Judy’s book choices.
There is no way I’ll be able to complete all these books in October, but I’ll have fun trying. I better get back to the reading……
Libraries in the UK are in real danger. The number of library visitors is dropping all the time, down 50% in the last 20 years, 9% since 2005.
.
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In the past five years, library funding in the UK has actually gone up by 25% to £1 billion and with these hard economic times you’d expect people to be borrowing books from libraries instead of buying them, but that isn’t the case.
I have to admit that I didn’t visit a library for seven years. With a full-time job I found it increasingly hard to visit a library regularly. It was always shut in the evening by the time I finished work and I couldn’t guarantee I’d be able to get there on a Saturday morning. The city centre location, with expensive car parking and long queues of traffic put me off. Why would I put myself through that when I could just buy a second hand book from a car boot sale for 50p and not worry about being fined for not taking it back on time?
I eventually signed up to the library when my oldest son was 2-years-old. I wanted him to experience the love of libraries that I’d once had and, as a full-time mum, I had the time to get there. My children love their library, but as an adult I’m not that impressed. They often don’t have the books I want and although I can order some (at a cost of 50p) there are many books that never end up in my library system.
My local library is packed with people wanting free Internet access, but very few people seem to be borrowing the books.
School Libraries too good?
My oldest son started school a few weeks ago and now has access to a wonderful library in his school and computers with sodapdf to access pdf books online. I’m beginning to wonder if there is a need to go to the main public library now that he is bringing school library books home on a regular basis.
In the US, despite cuts in library funding, visits to libraries are increasing, up 5% since 2006. I was astounded by the number of different initiatives available in some US libraries.
These include:
I’m going to look into the “books by mail” service a bit more and will report back with my findings soon.
The love for US libraries on Twitter was especially heart warming:
We go to storytime about 3-4 times a week at library. They also do lots of weekly crafts, put on a movie & special events. @mawbooks
Sometimes I take my kids to the library just for a family game night. We play board games there. So much fun. @pussreboots
I run a book club at my library, & there are always events like movies, writing groups, game nights, classes, etc. @pookasluagh
My boys have seen/petted more animals up close at the library at various events then they have anywhere else! @mawbooks
A Twitter conversation with @mawbooks led me to investigate her library in Utah. I have compared this with my local library system in Surrey, England.
I am aware that other libraries in both countries may have huge differences to these two, but as they served similar populations I thought it was an interesting comparison.
The difference in library usage can be seen by comparing the statistics:
| Library | Population | Number of Borrowers |
Estimated Number of Items that will be Checked Out in 2010 |
| Surrey, UK | 1.1 Million | 355,000 | 6 Million |
| Salt Lake County, Utah, USA | 783,000 | 680,000 | 15 Million |
The staggering difference can also be seen when you look at the number of copies of new books available to borrow:
| Library | Population | Copies of Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins | Copies of Freedom by Jonathan Franzen |
| Surrey, UK | 1.1 Million | 8 copies on order. No Holds | 12 copies on order. No Holds. |
| Salt Lake County, Utah, USA | 783,000 | 962 copies, 2718 Holds | 47 copies, 340 Holds |
Note: Statistics were correct on the day each book was released in its respective country.
1000 libraries in the UK are threatened with closure in the next year.
I still visit my library, but it is more from a sense of duty than a desire to check books out.
I have been impressed by the recent advances Surrey libraries have made in some areas, including a new free audio/ebook download service, but I’m worried that this isn’t going to be enough to save many libraries from closure.
Drastic changes need to be made if libraries are to compete with the increasingly cheap second-hand book market. I’m not sure what the solution is, but we need to start thinking about it before we lose our libraries forever.
What would encourage you to visit your library more often?
Are you surprised by the difference in library usage across the Atlantic?
Which US initiatives do you think would work well in the UK?
