2021 Booker Prize shortlist

The shortlist for this year's Booker Prize has just been announced:

A Passage North by Anuk Arudpragasam
The Promise by Damon Galgut
No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
The Fortune Men by Nadifa Mohamed
Bewilderment by Richard Powers
Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead

ETA: I've read only two of the Booker Dozen so far, The Promise and The Fortune Men, but both were chosen for the shortlist, and deservedly so.

Ha. I've read 5 from the Long list and none of them made the short list :)

>2 AnnieMod: Yup, I read all the ones that were eliminated. :)

I have read The Promise and No One is Talking About This and loved both of them. I own Great Circle and I will start that one this week. My copy of The Fortune Men seems to be on a very slow boat from the UK.

Is there any place to buy Bewilderment? It looks like it's not for sale until next year.

>3 Yells: Bewilderment: UK (‎William Heinemann), US (W. W. Norton & Company) and Canadian (‎Random House Canada) editions seem to be coming out on September 21, 2021.

The Fortune Men by Nadifa Mohamed is the one that won't make it in the US this year (plus the eliminated The Island) so I got them both shipped from UK and waiting for them.

>4 AnnieMod: Thanks! Yup, I think I was mixing this one up with The Fortune Men. I have a week off at the end of the month so hopefully I can make a dent in the pile.

>2 AnnieMod:, >3 Yells: That's usually what happens to me!

>3 Yells: I ordered my copy of The Fortune Men from The Book Depository on the day the longlist was announced. My LT library tells me that I received it on August 8th, or 13 days after I placed my order, which seems about right for books I've purchased from them in the past.

I pre-ordered the US Kindle version of Bewilderment, which will be delivered to me next Tuesday, September 21st.

>4 AnnieMod: An Island is the other title I ordered from The Book Depository, which came 2-3 weeks ago while I was out of town visiting my parents.

>5 Yells: I'm off for the rest of September, and only work nine days in October, so I should have no problem finishing the shortlist by November 3rd, the date of the award ceremony.

>6 kidzdoc: Book Depository's US distribution center are idiots and started messing up my address a couple of years ago (they put a USPS label on top of the one coming from UK once the book enters the country - and that one is wrong - they keep skipping the apartment number. No amount of calls and mails made any difference in actually tracing the issue of the incomplete addresses so I gave up) so for the last couple of years I've needed to find another way to get my books. Their Australian books are still making it in though so there is that. :) Plus I ordered mine later. Should be here soon-ish though. :)

>7 AnnieMod: I'm sorry that you've had problems with The Book Depository, Annie. I know that other people have had difficulties with them, but I never have, so I'll keep buying from them until I do.

There is a new book by Dr Kathryn Mannix, a British palliative care physician who I met at the Edinburgh International Book Festival after I read and reviewed her book With the End in Mind: Dying, Death and Wisdom in an Age of Denial, and I'll order it from The Book Depository today. It's titled Listen: How to Find the Words for Tender Conversations, and it will be published in the UK on Thursday.

>8 kidzdoc: I've used them since the day they showed up - first in Bulgaria, then here. Never had an issue with them. Until whatever update they did in the distribution center and things went downhill. :( I still try every few months, reformatting my address a bit to see if that will help, hoping they changed. Books get returned, I get a refund, I explain to them again the issue... rinse and repeat. Blackwells is now a vendor in Amazon.com (and so is PBshop) so... I can get the books I want usually that way (or I can hit their sites directly) but I miss BD. Oh well. :(

I rarely use BD so I don't really know how long it should take. It's been 3-4 weeks I think. Oh well, my TBR pile is threatening to bury me alive so it's not like I'm bookless while I wait. :)

And the Giller Prize long list was announced last week as well..... I might need longer than a week off.

And the winner is The Promise by Damon Galgut.

So glad it wasn't Great Circle.