Bye bye Booker
Thursday, October 13, 2005
This year's Booker Prize has passed with much less accompanying noise than in the last few years. It could just be my imagination but I think the short list aroused little interest and, from the meagre coverage I've seen since Monday's ceremony, the winner is not exactly going to make the bookshops take on extra staff to cope with the rush. Some of the reviews on Amazon have things like:
Hold me back.
My parents bought me the latest Rushdie for my birthday but I have not yet read it. I will, though, if only because I still remember the excitement I felt on finishing Midnight's Children. That was one of the few books I have bought repeatedly and given to friends. (Not the same friends, obviously, although that sort of thing may start to happen as we get older and start forgetting what we've read and who we've given books to. I say 'we' but that gives the erroneous impression that I have friends to give books to nowadays. Get on with it! Right.) None of the Booker winners of the last ten years or so have found their way to my shelves. This could be because my brain has turned to some sort of mush and my attention span is not up to serious writing. Or, it could be that what is termed serious writing has become increasingly some sort of mush. I challenge anyone to tell me that Stephenson's Baroque Cycle is not serious writing. Go on. Anyone.
To sum up: bored by the Booker and bored by most of the books that seem to get onto Booker long and short lists. Bored, I guess, by literature in Britain on the whole. There's a lot of good writing, though. Is the Booker redundant? I think so, yes.
The prose is so well balanced, it is almlost poetry. (sic)
"The Sea" is a profound meditation on time, loss, memory and longing.
... it's an artful descriptive prose that almost achieves the sense of darksome beauty it is suppose to evoke.
Hold me back.
My parents bought me the latest Rushdie for my birthday but I have not yet read it. I will, though, if only because I still remember the excitement I felt on finishing Midnight's Children. That was one of the few books I have bought repeatedly and given to friends. (Not the same friends, obviously, although that sort of thing may start to happen as we get older and start forgetting what we've read and who we've given books to. I say 'we' but that gives the erroneous impression that I have friends to give books to nowadays. Get on with it! Right.) None of the Booker winners of the last ten years or so have found their way to my shelves. This could be because my brain has turned to some sort of mush and my attention span is not up to serious writing. Or, it could be that what is termed serious writing has become increasingly some sort of mush. I challenge anyone to tell me that Stephenson's Baroque Cycle is not serious writing. Go on. Anyone.
To sum up: bored by the Booker and bored by most of the books that seem to get onto Booker long and short lists. Bored, I guess, by literature in Britain on the whole. There's a lot of good writing, though. Is the Booker redundant? I think so, yes.
