Curious about which Booker winners this sub loves and hates? I just finished "The Promise" and hated it. "Milkman" and "The Sellout" are my all time faves. "Amsterdam" is the worst winner that I've read.
Hope you are interested in reading a bit:
For context, the setting of this novel is an unnamed (but realistic) society experiencing a high level of political unrest wherein behaviors casual and commonplace and even traditional and routine, such as naming individuals, have become politicized and divisive. (In fact, the narrator omits all given names and refers to others by their service such as eldest sister, second brother-in-law, maybe-boyfriend, etc.) A large portion of the narration (first person) deals with navigating this PC landmine.
I wonder about your thoughts on the name ideas in the passage below-- particularly considering the recent trend of surnames as first names:
Milkman is one of/the antagonist(s)
"...Milkman's name really was Milkman. This was shocking. 'Can't be right,' cried people. 'Far-fetched. Weird. Silly even, to have the name Milkman.' But when you think about it, why was that weird? Butcher's a name. Sexton's a name. So is Weaver, Hunter, Roper, Cleaver, Player, Mason, Thatcher, Carver, Wheeler, Planter, Trapper, Teller, Doolittle, Pope and Nunn. Years later I came across a Mr. Postman who was a librarian, so they're all over the place, those names. As for 'Milkman' and the acceptability or not of 'Milkman', what would Nigel and Jason, our guardians of the names, have to say about that? [...] Alarmists, meanwhile, continued to debate of the provenance of the Milkman name. Was it one of ours? One of theirs? Was it from over the road? Over the water? Over the border? Should it be allowed? Banned? Binned? Laughed at? Discounted? What was the consensus? 'An unusual name,' everyone, with nervous caution, after great deliberation, said. It broke bounds of credibility, said the news, but lots of things in life break bounds of credibility. Breaking credibility, I was coming to understand, seemed to be what life was about. Nevertheless, the news of this Milkman name unsettled people; it cheated them, frightened them and there seemed no way round a feeling of embarrassment either. When considered a psuedonym, some codename, 'the milkman' had possessed mystique, intrigue, theatrical possibility. Once out of symbolism, however, once into the everyday, the banal, into any Tom, Dick and Harryness, any respect it had garnered as the cognomen of a high-cadre paramilitary activist was undercut immediately and, just as immediately, fell away."
Earlier in the novel, we get a pretty long list of first names considered too risky in their "oth
... keep reading on reddit ➡Very challenging Christmas quiz courtesy of the official Booker Prize website. Have a go if you're looking for a strenuous test of your literature knowledge. I'll attach a link below this of a PDF file I prepared with the answers to the 30 questions
#EDIT: Answers have now been added as a comment below
https://thebookerprizes.com/knowledge-of-angels-a-booker-christmas-quiz
Was looking around on the Financial Times and saw the latest winner of the Booker Prize for fiction.
https://www.ft.com/content/13dbaadb-867a-4863-a1a8-5b6cebc560c1
I don't generally follow literature prizes because my to-read list is way too long as it is. However, I thought I might give it a go.
What are your thoughts on the Booker Prize, does it generally indicate that a book is super interesting and well-written?
> Anna Burns has become the first Northern Irish author to win the Man Booker prize, taking the £50,000 award for Milkman, her timely, Troubles-set novel about a young woman being sexually harassed by a powerful man.
> The experimental novel, Burns’ third, is narrated by an unnamed 18-year-old girl, known as “middle sister”, who is being pursued by a much older paramilitary figure, the milkman. It is “incredibly original”, according to the Booker’s chair of judges, the philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah.
The Man Booker prize website refers to it as the "leading literary award" and I was wondering whether people agreed. (I'm taking this to mean specifically literary works since genre books usually have their own awards).
Personally, I have only recently started picking up books that have won or been shortlisted/longlisted for the Man Booker and have had a lot of success with them. I find books that have been nominated/won the Pulitzer are less consistently 'special' in some way. I especially think the authors nominated usually turn out some phenomenal work and remain notable in the world of literature.
What do you guys think?
Also, I haven't read any of the books that were nominated for this year yet, any recommendations on where to start? Or favorites from previous years?
TL;DR: Is the Man Booker actually the leading literary award? If not, why? If so, what are some compelling, worthwhile reads I should pick up that have been nominated?
