Man Booker Long List Announced

Today, the prestigious Man Booker Award Long List was announced.  This is one of my favorite prizes, in part, because first the long list is announced, in early September the shortlist of six is announced and then in October the winner is announced.  It creates an interesting and diverse reading list.  To be a candidate for the prize, the book must have been first published in the former UK Commonwealth.  Last year's winner was Howard Jacobson's The Finkler Question.  The downside is that nearly all of these books (other than Pigeon English) are not available in the U.S. yet.  For the ambitious, you can order most of these books through www.abebooks.com or www.amazon.co.uk.

Drum roll please...and the Long List for the 2011 Man Booker Prize is:

Julian Barnes The Sense of an Ending (Jonathan Cape - Random House)
Sebastian Barry On Canaan's Side (Faber)
Carol Birch Jamrach's Menagerie (Canongate Books)
Patrick deWitt The Sisters Brothers (Granta)
Esi Edugyan Half Blood Blues (Serpent's Tail - Profile)
Yvvette Edwards A Cupboard Full of Coats (Oneworld)
Alan Hollinghurst The Stranger's Child (Picador - Pan Macmillan)
Stephen Kelman Pigeon English (Bloomsbury)
Patrick McGuinness The Last Hundred Days (Seren Books)
A.D. Miller Snowdrops (Atlantic)
Alison Pick Far to Go (Headline Review)
Jane Rogers The Testament of Jessie Lamb (Sandstone Press)
D.J. Taylor Derby Day (Chatto & Windus - Random House)

Happy reading.  I'll keep you posted.