“I want to read the whole longlist!”

That’s how it begins.

Every July, we go bonkers when the Booker Prize longlist is announced.  E-mails are written. Conversation ensues.  Then the National Book Award longlist is announced and usurps the Booker.  The National Book Award recently established the longlist and shortlist system.  Before that, there were six finalists, and that was enough.

Honestly, we’re exhausted by the Booker longlist. We soon realize we don’t want to read the shortlist at all.  I admired  Sarah Perry’s Enlightenment, a novel about friendship, astronomy, and a ghost: it did not make the shortlist. I  am less enthusiastic about two shortlisted novels, Samantha Harvey’s Orbital, a science fiction prose poem, and Yael van der Wouden’s The Safekeep, an intruder-in-the- house novel.

Mr. Nemo has also read three from the Booker longlist.  He loved Claire Messud’s  The Strange Eventful History, a family saga, considered Percival Everett’s James a necessary update on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and was disappointed by Charlotte Wood’s Stone Yard Devotional, which, from what I’ve heard, could be called Of Mice and Women. I am, however, a fan of Wood, and recommend two of her novels, The Natural History of Things and The Weekend.

The National Book Award longlist looks exciting. As readers of my newsletter know, I loved the longlisted Jessica Anthony’s The Most, a novel told from two viewpoints, the story of the unraveling of a marriage.  Mr. Nemo is reading a longlisted nonfiction book, Rebecca Boyle’s Our Moon: How Earth’s Celestial Companion Transormed the Planet.

As you can see, we are playing Literary Prize Roulette.  Will this be the year when our picks win the prizes?

Either way, we discover a few new books we love.