Booker of the Week

Tonight sees the announcement of this year's winner of the Booker Prize for fiction: you can find out more about the shortlist here as well as interviews with the authors here.  And you can watch the announcment on follow the Booker livestream here. 

Even more excitingly, for the first time ever, we've managed to schedule our annual 'Predict the Booker Prize' event for the very same evening as the real thing. For those of you unfamiliar with 'Predict the Booker', it's a bit like a balloon debate. But with books. Six books, six readers, five minutes each: our Pauline readers present each of the shortlisted nominations before the audience votes for the one that the SPS community thinks should win this year's prestigious Booker Prize.  

Will the serendipitous synchronicity of this year's event affect our five year track record of getting it absolutely, 100% wrong, we hear you ask? Quite probably not. But if you'd like to find out, you can register to join virtually here or book an in person place here.   

We'll be reporting on that event later in the week, but meanwhile, today's post.  After Donald Trump's first election victory in 2016, Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four rocketed up the best-seller charts, especially after Trump spokesperson Kellyanne Conway coined the phrase 'alternative facts' to defend false claims the Trump administration made about the supposedly high turnout for Trump's first inauguration.  Last week, the phenomenon was repeated, with a 250% increase in the novel's sales since last week, although this time round, Orwell's dystopia has been eclipsed by Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, sales of which increased by a 'whopping 6,886%' according to CNN.  But is it right to connect contemporary events to this particular label? Noah Kasolowsky considers how popular usage can redefine a legacy.  

Predict the Booker 2023

Predict the Booker 2023

On Wednesday evening, six Paulines boldly took on the annual challenge of pitting their wits against the Booker Prize panel, hoping to persuade our live and online audience that their selection from the 2023 shortlist would be this year's winner.  

The Booker prize is, as our erudite host Mr Mahmoud observed, the leading literary award in the English speaking world. It's also the literary award that the Pauline community is apparently incapable of predicting with any accuracy: we now have a five year record of absolute, total, 100% failure. Will this year be any different?* We're eternal optimists here at the book blog, so here's hoping that it will be (tho we'll have to wait until Sunday evening to find out).  In the meantime, here's what our volunteer readers thought of the novels they selected.  

Book of the Week

A reminder that tomorrow evening, it's our annual Predict the Booker event: six books, and six Pauline readers, each with five minutes to talk about one of the shortlisted books, and take questions from the audience, before we vote for the novel that the SPS community thinks should win the prestigious Booker Prize of 2023. The actual winner will be announced on Sunday 26 November, and we'll then discover whether the judges agree with our choice!

This year, our readers are as follows:

• Xavi is reading Study for Obedience, Sarah Bernstein’s unsettling book about prejudice in a remote northern community. 
• Max is reading The Bee Sting by Paul Murray, a tragicomic story of a family trying not to fall apart in rural Ireland. 
• Aditya is reading Prophet Song by Paul Lynch. Also set in Ireland, this imagines a totalitarian future where a mother has to make a terrible choice. 
• Archie returns to read for the second time. This time he is reading This Other Eden by Paul Harding, the story of an island of rejects from the American mainstream whose community comes under threat from civilisation. 
• Sai is reading Chetna Maroo’s Western Lane - a story of family, grief, and squash. 
• And finally, Enyu, makes a very welcome return for the third time to read If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery. This book follows a Jamaican family in Miami navigating recession, racism and Hurricane Andrew.

The event, hosted by Mr Mahmoud, takes place in the Kayton Library at 18.30 tomorrow (Wednesday 22nd), but it's also available on our live stream - click here if you'd like to register to attend.  You can find out more about the books, and the Booker, here.

Meanwhile, here's today's book of the week:  

Flatland by Edwin A Abbot

Recommended by Ishaan Nigam

Flatland is a book about the way creatures perceive their world, and how they believe that there could be no more to reality than what they experience, even though the universe may be infinitely more complex. This concept is concisely brought to life through the eyes of a 2d square in a dimension known as Flatland. 

The first part of the book is a description of the narrator and the nature of his society. The second part of the book is about the narrator’s visit by a Sphere and his subsequent journeys into other dimensions (both above and below) and how this changes his perception of his own dimension.  Although Flatland is a fictional book, it challenges the reader to think about very real mathematical and philosophical concepts, and to adjust their own perception using the insights from the narrator. I would recommend this book to people from around age eleven and above who are more mathematically inclined, or to slightly older readers of fourteen and above.

Book of the Week (and Booker Prize shortlist!)

The shortlist for this year's Booker Prize has been announced: you can find out more details here. The shortlisted novels are:

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

Western Lane by Chetna Maroo

Poetry Talks, Prizes and Book of the Week

It's a packed post today, as Mr Gardner reports on last Saturday's Edward Thomas Prize Poetry Lectures, 2023 (and announces the winner), plus we have our usual Book of the Week - Life Ceremony by Sayaka Murata, recommended by Edward Buss.

Edward Thomas Prize Poetry Lectures

Mr Gardner

Saturday saw the return of the English Department’s annual poetry lectures, with five speakers from the Lower and Upper Eighth presenting on poets of their choice. There was a pleasing and impressive variety in the selections of this year’s participants, with poems in disparate forms from different periods, together providing an eclectic array of voices and ideas.

 

Edward Thomas  

Carnegie Prize - the winners ...!

Mrs Cummings

Finally! St Paul’s choice for best book has actually won a prize! BookSoc met over lunch on Wednesday to watch the livestream of the awards. To our absolute delight our choice for the Shadower’s Award was won by 

Ruta Sepety’s I must betray you. We all enjoyed this book and think it’s a worthy winner. We would have liked to see it win the main prize, but a prize voted by children from all around the country is definitely something an author values.

The Yoto Carnegie Medal itself was won by Manon Steffan Ros’ The Blue Book of Nebo.

This is the first time in the Carnegie Medal’s nearly 90-year history that the prize has been awarded to a book in translation. Told through the dual narrative of a mother and son in post-apocalyptic Nebo, this 'compelling, conceivable' story explores Welsh identity and culture, and offers a beautiful appreciation of language. The original Welsh publication, Llyfr Glas Nebo, won multiple awards, including the 2019 Wales Book of the Year.

Manon Steffan Ros said, 'I used to see the word Carnegie on the covers of my favourite books as a child, and the fact that The Blue Book of Nebo now has that honour bestowed upon it means more than I can say – and to be the first book in translation to win the Yoto Carnegie Medal for Writing is a source of great delight. One of the greatest privileges of my life has been the fact that I was raised through the medium of the Welsh language, and having access to two languages has brought me so much joy and opportunity. There’s a huge, lively, thriving Welsh language cultural scene that I’m honoured to be a part of. Each language offers a unique and enriching perspective on the world, and so literature in translation has the potential to enhance our lives greatly. Your favourite book might not yet be translated into a language that you understand.'

There’s an interview with her here.

Although we thought I Must Betray You should have won, The Blue Book of Nebo took equal second place in our voting, alongside the unrewarded The Eternal life of Clara Hart. These books generated a lot (really, a lot!) of discussion and aroused strong feelings for and against. We have plenty of copies in the school libraries so do read them and see what you think.

Thanks to Armaan, Bolang, Louis, Luke, Soren, Theodore, Tiger, Viggo for some great conversations

BookSoc Carnegie Shadower's Medal voting

Mrs Cummings

This week BookSoc met and voted for the Shadower’s Award. This involved a lot of impassioned discussion, a fair amount of agreeing to disagree, but we got there in the end. In time-honoured St Paul’s style, we voted for the book we think should win (the Shadower’s Award) and for the book we think will win. The last had us looking up the judges’ biographies and trying to second-guess their interests and biases.

The Shadower’s Award – St Paul’s vote goes to… 

I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys.  This moving novel tells the story of the Christian who is forced to choose between betraying his family and risking everything during the Romanian Revolution of 1989. Aimed at an older reader this book really highlights the hardships of the dictatorship. You can read our review of it here.

 
The scores were…

• I Must Betray You  49
• The Eternal Return of Klara Hart 38
• The Blue Book of Nebo 38
• The Light in Everything 23
• When Shadows Fall 15

The book we think will win was much closer with The Light in Everything and I Must Betray You getting the same score. 

After a run-off between the two books, The Light in Everything just nudged ahead (by 2 votes).  

The Light in Everything is a book about blended families and about learning to trust again. Aimed at a younger reader it is nonetheless a good read for all ages.

 
The announcement of both the Shadower’s Award and the Carnegie Medal for Writing is on the 21st June. We’ll be hoping the right book wins!

And the (SPS) Booker Prize of 2022 goes to ...

Yesterday evening, the Kayton Library hosted SPS’s fifth Predict the Booker prize evening, where six Pauline readers lobbied the live and online audience to persuade them that their chosen novel from the Booker shortlist deserved to win the prize. 

As the evening’s host, Mr Mahmoud, pointed out, the SPS audience’s success rate in predicting the prize so far is 100% - 100% failure. Will this year be any different? You’ll have to wait until Monday 17th October to find out: but in the meantime, here are the Pauline readers’ thoughts …

SPS Predict the Booker Prize 2021

Last night, SPS held its fourth annual ‘Predict the Booker’ event, streamed live from the Kayton Library to an online audience, and chaired by Mr Mahmoud. A panel of six Pauline students each selected one of the novels on this year’s shortlist and pitched the case for it as a possible Booker Prize winner. At the end of the evening, viewers cast their vote for the novel they’d been persuaded should win, and the novel they thought would win. Read on to find out what they decided …

Prizes Prizes Prizes

September kicks off the season of literary prizes, with the announcement of the winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction - the extraordinary Piranesi, by Susannah Clarke (reviewed by Mrs Cummings below) - and the Booker Prize shortlist. The Booker prize-winner will be announced on November 3rd, which means that this year's SPS Predict the Booker evening will take place just after half term. 

For those of you unfamiliar with Predict the Booker, this is what happens: a panel of student readers each choose one of the books on the shortlist, and make the case for it to win (and occasionally NOT to win), before the audience decides which book will get their vote - a bit like a literary balloon debate. If you'd like to get involved as one of this year's speakers, please contact Mrs Cummings, or pop along to the library to choose which book you'd like to recommend.  

The SPS track record for successfully predicting the winner has been, er, mixed - you can find out more about our 2020 predictions here, and our 2019's here - but it's always a highly entertaining (and illuminating) evening. We hope that lots of you will come along, or watch from home, as we'll be streaming the event again this year: so do get involved - it's a lot of fun!  

'Piranesi lives in the House. Perhaps he always has.'

Piranesi lives in the House, which is his world. It has endless corridors and an infinite number of rooms. Everywhere there are statues, each different from the next, and inside the House an ocean is imprisoned, with tides and waves flooding the staircases. Piranesi lives completely alone apart from a twice-weekly visitor who brings incongruous gifts. But then messages start to appear, scratched into the fabric of the House, and the space which Piranesi thought was safe and understood becomes strange and dangerous.

This is an absolutely magical book. You enter the world of Susanna Clarke’s astonishing imagination and while you’re in there, nothing else matters. This is a book to read in one sitting, immersed, and when you finish you will still have the sound of the waves in your ears and you will be startled by the real world. It is my book of the year, and indeed probably my favourite book of many years.

Susanna Clarke’s earlier work Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell was hugely successful but there has been a lengthy gap between it and this, her second book. During that time she has been ill with chronic fatigue and thought she would never write again. Her first book is a doorstop coming in at over 1,000 pages. This is a very slim volume in comparison at only 272 pages and it would be easy to feel cheated at how short it is. But every word counts and the writing is lyrical and elegant. Please do read it, it is wonderful.

You can see Bernadine Evaristo announcing the Women's Prize for Fiction winner here: - it's about 28 minutes in!  
 

Book of the Week

In The Distance by Hernan Diaz

Recommended by Mr Pirrie

Now that the excitement of the Booker has died down, and my copy of Shuggie Bain is sitting on a gargantuan pile of others for Christmas reading, I though it might be worthwhile to venture across the pond to America’s pre-eminent award for letters: The Pulitzer. Its roots since 1917 are in journalism and drama, but over the last hundred years it has expanded into a wide range of categories including poetry, criticism, non-fiction and biography to name a few. 

When a friend recommended In The Distance by Hernan Diaz (a finalist for the 2018 Fiction prize) as worthy of belonging to the great tradition of frontier literature my curiosity was piqued; when the novel arrived and a review on the back stated 'It’s as if Herman Melville had navigated the American west, instead of the ocean', I was smitten.

SPS Predict the Booker 2020 - and the winner is ...

By Ed McFie

This year’s Predict the Booker Prize, held virtually for the first time ever on Zoom, and compèred by Mr Breslin, saw six Pauline readers making six short presentations on one of six books from the Booker prize shortlist. Their task? To win the audience over by arguing the case for their given book.  

First off was Hari Collins, presenting Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi. 

The book focuses on a mother, Tara, and her daughter, Antara, vividly exploring the relationship between the two. Initially, Tara treats her daughter very badly, to the point of physical and verbal abuse, as she recklessly follows her own desires. But as Tara ages, and develops dementia, Antara is obliged to take care of her mother, although her mother never did the same for her. 

Hari argued that Doshi explores ideas about freedom from an unusual perspective. Whereas many novels set a repressive, conformist older generation against freedom-seeking youth, Doshi complicates the issue by presenting it from the point of view of a younger woman who yearns for order and organisation, but is trapped by her mother's refusal to follow the traditional path: for Antara, her mother's non-conformity is as stifling and stultifying as the conformity against which the older woman originally rebelled.  

It's almost Booker time ...

Next Thursday, the judges announce the winner of the 2020 Booker prize - complete with a guest appearance from Barack Obama - and in case this wasn't exciting and suspense-filled enough, on Monday, we're running the third SPS 'Predict the Booker' event. We can't promise any former US Presidents, but Mrs Cummings will be hosting, Mr Breslin will be compèring, and six Pauline readers - Nikolas Boyd-Carpenter, George Davies, Hari Collins, Monty Brown, Kiyo-Brandreth-Stroud and Joachim Sciamma - will make a case for each of the novels on the shortlist. Then YOU - the online audience - decide ... 

Previous 'Predict the Bookers' have been held in the library: this year, it's our first ever 'live' broadcast, so tune in and cast your vote: registration details can be found here.  We've been wrong two years in a row - who knows, maybe 2020 will be third time lucky!

If you'd like to prepare for the event, and aren't entirely sure you'll get through all six novels over the weekend, here's a quick catch up on the books in question, and their authors, courtesy of those nice people at the Booker website.  

This week saw the announcement of the shortlist for the Booker prize, which is awarded to the best novel written in English each year. The judges - a particularly fascinating group, including poet and dramatist Lemn Sissay, Emily Wilson, translator of Homer’s Odyssey, and Lee Child, creator of modern day epic hero Jack Reacher - produced a longlist of 12 novels back in July, and they’ve now narrowed that down to the final six.

Hilary Mantel famously did the double in 2009 and 2012, by winning the prize for the first two novels in her series about Tudor statesman Thomas Cromwell. Anyone hoping she might do the triple, with the final novel in the trilogy, The Mirror and the Light, will be sadly disappointed - she didn’t make the final cut. But you can find a list of the novels that did here - and an article about them here - and they all sound brilliant. They're all available to borrow from the Kayton Library, so get reading, and see what you think. 

And the (SPS) Booker Prize Winner of 2019 is ...

This year's Predict the Booker Prize, held last night in the Kayton Library, and compèred by Mr Hollands, gave six Pauline readers the chance to make a case on behalf of one of the books on the Booker shortlist, and win the audience's vote.

First off was Teddy Ackery, whose pitch for Bernardine Evaristo's Girl, Woman, Other focussed on its sense of freedom and lack of exclusivity. The book's characters are predominantly black, working-class lesbians, and Teddy confessed some early hesitation about the appropriateness of a white, middle-class male reader waxing lyrical about experiences so different from his own. But ultimately, he argued, this was a book about inclusion, a funny and accessible novel that speaks to everyone through its diverse range of characters and themes.

And the (SPS) Booker Prize Winner is ...

At last night's Predict the Booker Prize evening in the Kayton Library, four Pauline advocates - Sebastian Rodgers, Conor Sinnott, Rufus Law, Will Reith - and the school's librarian, Ms Cummings, put the case for their chosen book from the Booker shortlist.  With Mr Hollands acting as compère, each speaker introduced their novel, and gave a critical overview of its strengths and themes, before reading an extract and fielding questions from the audience.

Predict the Booker Prize-Winner!

Miss McLaughlin

Last week the short list for the Man Booker Prize 2018 was announced. To mark this annual event, this year at St Paul’s we are launching a shadowing event where six boys in the 8th form will be taking on one book each, reading them and then coming together to make a case as to whether their book should be the winner of this prestigious award.

Their debate will be held in the Kayton Library on 11th October at 6pm. Students, staff and parents are invited to join the event, whether or not they have read all, or indeed any, of the shortlist.

Keen to get involved? Last week on the Book Blog, Mr Hager offered some comment on each of the shortlisted texts. It would be great to have students (and staff and parents) at the event who have read some of the texts in contention. You can buy all six at TheBookPeople’s website or pop in to the library to borrow a copy (we have a limited supply- they are selling out!).

Following the debate and discussion we will have a vote on which book we think will win the prize. The real winner will be announced the following week and we will see if we were correct.  Join us in the Kayton Library on 11 October at 6pm - RSVP using the link provided - https://www.trybooking.co.uk/GGD

Hope to see you there!

Man Booker 2018 Shortlist Revealed!

This year's Man Booker Prize shortlist has been revealed, so now is the perfect time to go online and order six books to read between now and the end of Remedy.  Why not go to TheBookPeople's website where you can buy all 6 books for £40?

This year's list is supposed to reflect the 'dark times' that we live in, so prepare yourself for some powerful and thought-provoking reads.

One of the judges has described every single book as a 'miracle of stylistic invention', so there's no excuse not to read every single one of them.

Will any of these be as good as last year's winner, Lincoln in the Bardo?  Have a look at the blurbs below to see if any of them take your fancy, or visit the Man Booker Website to find out more.

Everything Under (Daisy Johnson)

At 27, Johnson is the youngest ever shortlisted author.  She writes about a troubled mother-daughter relationship and reimagines Greek mythology in the modern world.

The Mars Room (Rachel Kushner)

Romy Hall is facing two consecutive life sentences, plus six years, at Stanville Women's Correctional Facility.  The future is looking bleak until news from outside brings a new urgency to her existence, challenging her to escape her own destiny.

The Overstory (Richard Powers)

A novel told in 'concentric rings of interlocking fable' about trees.  It ranges from antebellum New York to the late 20th Century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest.

Milkman (Anna Burns)

The protagonist of the novel lives in a world where to be interesting is dangerous.  She does her best to hide the details of her life from her mother, and hides an encounter with the Milkman from everyone.  Until her first brother-in-law finds out and things get interesting, and dangerous.

Washington Black (Esi Edugyan)

Escape is only the beginning.  From the brutal cane plantations of Barbados to the icy wastes of the Canadian Arctic, from the mud-filled streets of London to the eerie deserts of Morocco, Washington Black is the tale of a world destroyed and the search to make it whole again.

The Long Take (Robin Robertson)

A D-Day veteran has PTSD.  Unable to return home to rural Nova Scotia, he seeks refuge in the city.  Ranging from New York to LA to San Francisco, the novel explores 'the crucial period of fracture of in American history, one that also allowed film noir to flourish'.

The Women's Prize for Fiction: some summer reading suggestions

Miss McLaughlin

Early in June, Kamila Shamsie was announced as the winner of the 2018 Women’s Prize for Fiction with her seventh novel Home Fire.

Of the shortlist, the 2018 Chair of Judges Sarah Sands, said: “This was a dazzling shortlist, it had depth and richness and variety. We were forcibly struck by the quality of the prose. Each book had its champions. We loved the originality of mermaids and courtesans, we were awed by the lyrical truth of an American road trip which serves as a commentary of the history of race in America, we discussed into the night the fine and dignified treatment of a woman’s domestic abuse, we laughed over a student’s rite of passage and we experienced the truth of losing a parent and loving a child. In the end we chose the book which we felt spoke for our times. Home Fire is about identity, conflicting loyalties, love and politics. And it sustains mastery of its themes and its form. It is a remarkable book which we passionately recommend.”

In the half term, I read one of the shortlisted works. Imogen Hermes Gower’s The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock is set in Georgian London and presents a transactional world where everything from wonders and women’s affections are monetised and mythicised. Mr Hancock is a Merchant who, after finding his ship exchanged for a curiosity, is swept into the world of up-scale brothels full of high class men, showmanship and gaudy extravagance. As the novel moves into magic realism and weaves a plot around Angelica Neal – a beautiful, vain and immoral courtesan - and Jonah Hancock, the reader is led through parlours, brothels, coffee shops and dockyards and comes face-to-face with marvels. Imogen Hermes Gower’s prose shimmers (forgive me), mermaid-like and is, in fact, so subtle and engaging that, by the time we are faced with one, we too believe in the strange rolling mermaid held in a salt-water tank.

Imogen Hermes Gower studied Archaeology, Anthropology, and Art History and went on to work in museums. She gained plaudits for her short stories based on the artefacts she worked with and this, her debut novel, also based on an object, is the product of her work begun whilst completing an MA in Creative Writing.

Hers was one of six books on the short list for The Women’s Prize for Fiction, announced in April, the full short list being:

Elif Batuman, The Idiot
Imogen Hermes Gowar, The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock
Jessie Greengrass, Sight
Meena Kandasamy, When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife
Kamila Shamsie, Home Fire
Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing

You can read an interview with Imogen Hermes Gower here and an extract from her novel here.  

You can find out more about the prize here, and website has usefully created a page full of suggestions for your next read.

This year's judges:

Imogen Stubbs, Katy Brand, Catherine Mayer, Sarah Sands and Anita Anand. 

Nobel Prize for Literature postponed until 2019

The secretive committee that decides upon the winner of the Nobel Prize has revealed today that it will not be announcing a winner in 2018.  This is due to a scandal that has rocked the committee and caused numerous members to resign in protest at the conduct of a man with whom the committee is associated.  The postponement of the award is a measure designed to restore confidence in the Nobel committee, and an attempt to ensure the longevity of the prize itself.

This means that there will be two winners in 2019.  The committee's processes are notoriously secretive, but the winner is the work who is best deemed to fulfil Alfred Nobel's vision of "the most outstanding work in an ideal direction."  In 2016, this was considered to by Bob Dylan, and last year's winner was the less controversial Kazuo Ishiguro.  Who do you think should be considered in 2019?  The book blog would love to hear your views.

In the meantime, why don't you have a look at the list of past winners if you're looking for reading inspiration for the summer?

https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/