Most of my reading time last week was dedicated to 2024 Booker Prize nominees. I decided to go that route because the Booker Prize shortlist is going to be announced this Monday, September 16, and I’m hoping, with some luck, to have read two or three of the finalists by then. So I finished up Orbital by Samantha Harvey and Wild Houses by Colin Barrett to go along with the two others from this year’s list I’ve already read (James and This Strange Eventful History). I’m also well into The Safekeep, by Dutch author Yael Van Der Wouden, so it looks like I’ll have read at least five of the thirteen nominees by the 16th.
But that doesn’t mean I’m not dipping in and out of others when the mood for a change of pace strikes, so I’ve also been spending a little time with these guys:
Pastures of the Empty Page is a compilation of the reflections of a group of writers who were impacted by the friendship and influence of author Larry McMurtry. The book’s subtitle is “Fellow Writers on the Life and Legacy of Larry McMurtry,” and that seems to be an accurate description of what to expect inside. All of the pieces I’ve read so far are by writers who knew McMurtry well or had at least met him at some point early on in their lives. I don’t think McMurtry had any idea just how important he was, or would turn out to be, to so many of his fellow writers.
Chinese author Cixin Liu’s To Hold Up the Sky is a collection of science fiction short stories set in China. There are only ten stories in this 336-page collection, so on average they are a little longer than the stories in most collections. I’m particularly taken with the first story in the book, “The Village Teacher,” a story about an altruistic teacher in a remote mountain village who wants nothing more than to better the lives of his isolated and impoverished young students. Little does he know just how huge an impact he is about to have on the world.
I know for sure that this week I’ll be at least beginning the other two Booker Prize nominees that I have on hand, Rita Bullwinkel’s Headshot and Tommy Orange’s Wandering Stars. Headshot is about a women’s boxing tournament being held in Reno, Nevada. Each distinct section of the novel covers a different pair of fighters trying to make their way to the championship matchup. Wandering Stars is both a prequel and a sequel to Orange’s There There from a couple of years ago. It is a story of the Native American experience that uses all the characters from There There, a novel I read just a few months ago, so maybe I’ll have a little bit of a jump on this one.
By the end of the week, I’ll be ready to start with formal reviews and rankings of the Booker Prize books I will have experienced for myself. With any luck, I’ll have read, or near-read, seven of the thirteen nominated novels by this time next week…if I didn’t just jinx myself by saying that, that is.
I also have a promised review coming up in the next few weeks for a book I haven’t started yet, so Deadly Animals (from Marie Tierney) might become a change-of-pace novel for me at some point this week.
I’m really looking forward to learning what the Booker Prize shortlist looks like this year. It may be a few weeks before I receive another of the listed books from my library, so I’m hoping that I don’t find myself on September 17 still not having read any of the six soon-to-be-announced finalists.
Good Reading to all…
