Orange update
I feel like a real hypocrite. After suggesting that people abandon their list-based reading in an earlier post, I then commented on another blog that the Richard & Judy book club provides useful guidance to people awash in a sea of fiction and/or intimidated by 'literature'. (At least, that's probably what I meant to say. Maybe.) In addition to this, since my post a few weeks ago, I read one of Zola's Rougon-Maquart cycle of novels, which has promped the medium- to long-term goal of reading all twenty (I'm not sure how I'm going to achieve this, as they're not all in print in translation, and my French isn't going to hold up to reading the originals!). And then, the Orange prize longlist came out, and I decided to try to work my way through them aswell. I revel in my hypocrisy - it's not like I mistakenly engaged in the endeavour - it does say longlist after all.
Anyway, the nominees are as follows:
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Poppy Shakespeare by Clare Allan
Arlington Park by Rachel Cusk
The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
Peripheral Vision by Patricia Ferguson
Over by Margaret Forster
The Dissident by Nell Freudenberger
When to Walk by Rebecca Gowers
A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo
The Observations by Jane Harris
Carry Me Down by MJ Hyland
The Girls by Lori Lansens
Alligator by Lisa Moore
What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn
The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney
Careless by Deborah Robertson
Afterwards by Rachel Seiffert
Ten Days in the Hills by Jane Smiley
Digging to America by Anne Tyler
The Housekeeper by Melanie Wallace
I've crossed out what I've read to date. Why? Because I have a strikethrough button and I can use it.
Five books read (The Observations, Carry Me Down, Half of a Yellow Sun, Arlington Park, The Inheritance of Loss) doesn't make me qualified to judge what should be included in the shortlist, but if what I've read so far reflects the general standard of the rest of the list, that would mean that only one or two books of the five I've read should make the shortlist. I have my heart set on three making it to the next round - The Observations, Half of a Yellow Sun, and Carry Me Down.
The Inheritance of Loss had its glory day with the Booker, and I was rooting for Carry Me Down on that occasion. I wouldn't like to see a reoccurrence of that unhappy event so it is excluded from my shortlist. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about Arlington Park. The glimpse into the neuroses and preoccupations of these middle-class women with children thrilled me to some measure. But it also felt self-indulgent and tiresome at points. There was no solidity to the characters, and on occasion I found it hard to grasp their differences.
The Observations was a fabulous page-turning Victorian pastiche that was thoroughly captivating and entertaining - and I think there's a place on the shortlist for a book like this. I've just finished Half of a Yellow Sun and it's a little too raw for me to comment on it - I don't know enough about the subject matter to feel qualified in any case. And Carry Me Down is quite simply my favourite book of 2006. On to The Tenderness of Wolves now, and then The Girls.
Becca
3 Comments
Reader Comments (3)
The point of reading the Orange longlist is surely to see if you come to the same conclusions as the esteemed judges in first reducing the list to a shortlist, and then to an eventual winner - ie picking your favourites and seeing how closely they tie to some form of consensus. Call it a literary form of sports gambling - you do your research, and back your picks. But it is no fun without effective research, which means reading the same books as the judges.
R&J is not a list, I think it is like having a well-read friend recommend a book to you - a substitute for those mythical days of yore when there was no TV, (never mind Sky Plus), no radio even. Back in the day, obviously everyone was well read, or they were outside playing happily and healthily, and passers-by from down the street would hail you as you were sweeping your doorstep saying "I read a great book the other day, that I borrowed from the public library, that I really think you would like."
I don't think people start with the aim of 'I will read every book on the R&J recommendations table' - which was your argument on the completist/perfectionist nature of lists.
And finally, reading a series of 20 novels because you read one is not truly list-based reading, any more than someone who buys the latest Tom Clancy, Harry Potter, Reginald Hill, or J.D. Salinger when (or if) they come out - you have found something you liked, and you have a reliable source for more of the same. You aren't relying on a consensus opinion, or using someone elses judgment.
That's my two penn'orth. As an aside - grammatical bug-bear of the day goes to the amazingly large number of people (thanks Google) who use two penn'orth worth - as if they are staging some sort of demonstration against the fact that the expression was contracted in the first place.
The award for "Most amusing statement found on Google when doing a search on two penn'orth" goes to the expression "For what its worth, here's my two-pennorth"...
Someone else who didn't like it! O happy day. (http://vectoreditors.wordpress.com/2007/05/14/the-inheritance-of-loss/) In happier news, though, I just finished A Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers and adored it. (Review on Thursday, hopefully.) It will take something extraordinary for me to hope for another winner, I think.