My Man Booker Reading List

The Man Booker Prize is a literary award given to the best original novel, written in English, and published in the UK. However, not only the winner of the Prize gets international renown but also the authors who get to be both long-listed o short-listed sometimes.

One of the reasons behind paying a lot more of attention to this award, at least in my case, is the fact that a lot of those books are way out of my comfort zone and although they may be hard for me to read, I still think it’s a brilliant idea to just lose yourself a bit and expand your reading tastes.

This year there are a few titles I wanna give a try and even though I know I probably won’t read them all before the winner is announced I believe these four books are the ones I’m interested in the most. They are very different from one another but all of them really caught my attention. I’m not planning on reading anymore of the list but that can change depending on the shortlist or if I’m crazy enough to tackle the entire longlist (I wish!). Of course, I will check out the winner even if it’s not among the ones I’m showing you today.

The Moor’s Account by Laila Lalami. Historical fiction about the Spanish conquistador Pánfilo de Narváez and his expedition to claim for the Spanish crown what is known today as the Gulf Coast of the USA. However, Lalami decides to use the voice of the first black explorer: Estebanico, a Moroccan slave, to narrate us this famed expedition. And this is precisely why I decided to pick it up.

Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg. The plot looks like something that will make me suffer: a day before her daughter gets married, Jude’s life crushes down when her house goes up in flames and everybody dies (her daughter, her soon to be son-in-law, her ex-husband and her boyfriend) but her.

The Chimes by Anna Smaill. A debut novel and possibly the most intriguing of the lot because Anna Smaill said she wrote this as a YA novel but her editor or publishers (I’m not sure) decided it was best to market this as an adult book, something everybody could read. It’s a dystopian novel and we all know how lovely my relationship with dystopia is (NOOOOO!) but... it is focused on music. Set in a reimagined London where people cannot form new memories, everything is controlled by music and the written word has been destroyed. Sounds good, right? I’ve also heard the writing style is insanely beautiful.

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. A bit of a paradoxical title taking its 720 pages but it sounds like an outstanding novel and one which will make me bawl my eyes out for sure. A Little Life follows four friends throughout their lives and apparently their stories are just heart-breaking and there are also trigger warning for almost everything you can think of and I’m scared to read it because I know it’s gonna be a hard read but everybody out there who has read this, has loved it so I just need to experience this and destroy my heart in the process.

Did you guys know about the Man Booker? Do you also check out both the longlist and the shortlist and see if something catches your attention? Or maybe just try and read the winner? Do you find the books I mentioned interested? Would you read any?