On the Booker Prize

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading2 Comments

This isn’t a review. I read M. John Harrison’s The End of Everything over tonight and last night; it’s a novella, under 200 pages, so it’s going to be a quick read no matter what.(*) My copy says “Longlisted” on the cover, this image says “Shortlisted,” and, well, the latest editions are going to read “Winner.” Despite that, of the currently 1750 books I have read on Goodreads, it has the fifth-lowest average rating.(**) One of the books worse than it was written by Steven Seagal. I gave it three stars and I feel like I’m being generous. I don’t have a lot to say about it, really; it’s just not a good book, and the notion that it was the best book written in the English language this year is ludicrous. It’s certainly not as good as John of John, which was also shortlisted, and while I haven’t read Marlon James’ The Disappearers yet, it’s on my shelf and I’m willing to say I’m going to like it more just based on what I know of James’ work. I’ve also got my eye on Black Bag, just based on the cover.

This got me curious about how many of the winners of this award I knew anything about at all. You all know how I feel about Litratcher, but this wasn’t even one of those books that made me feel like I wasn’t smart enough to appreciate it. Hell, The Rouse was approximately four hundred times as cryptic and obscure as this book was. If you wanted to give the Booker Prize to a science fiction book published in 2026, it should have been that.

Anyway, of the Booker Prize winners since 1969:

Read, Enjoyed: A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James (2015); Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie (1981);

Read, Did Not Enjoy: The End of Everything by M. John Harrison (2026);

Have Heard Of But Have Never Read: Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart (2020; it’s on my Unread Shelf, so I’ll get to it); The Testaments by Margaret Atwood (2019); Life of Pi by Yann Martel (2002, and tbh I’m surprised I never read this); The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (2000); Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee (1999); Amsterdam by Ian McEwan (1998); The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (1997); The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje (1992); The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (1989, another “wait, really?);

Have Heard of the Book or the Author, but Not Both: Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (2017); The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton (2013); Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel (2012); Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (2009); The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai (2006); The Sea by John Banville (2005); The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje (1992); The Old Devils by Kingsley Amis (1986); Life and Times of Michael K by J. M. Coetzee (1983); Rites of Passage by William Golding (1980); The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch (1978); In a Free State by V. S. Naipaul (1971);

Absolutely No Clue: Flesh by David Szalay (2025); Orbital  by Samantha Harvey (2024); Prophet Song by Paul Lynch (2023); The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka (2022); The Promise by Damon Galgut (2021); Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo (2019); Milkman by Anna Burns (2018); The Sellout by Paul Beatty (2016); The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan (2014); The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes (2011); The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson (2010); The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga (2008); The Gathering by Anne Enright (2007); The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst (2004); Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre (2003); True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey (2001); Last Orders by Graham Swift (1996); The Ghost Road by Pat Barker (1995); How late it was, how late by James Kelman (1994); Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle (1993); Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth (1992); The Famished Road by Ben Okri (1991); Possession by A. S. Byatt (1990); Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey (1988); Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively (1987); The Bone People by Keri Hulme (1985); Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner (1984); Schindler’s Ark by Thomas Keneally (1982); Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald (1979); Staying On by Paul Scott (1977); Saville by David Storey (1976); Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (1975); The Conservationist by Nadine Gordimer (1974); Holiday by Stanley Middleton (1974); The Siege of Krishnapur by J. G. Farrell (1973); G. by John Berger (1972); The Elected Member by Bernice Rubens (1970); Something to Answer For by P. H. Newby (1969) and Troubles by J.G Farrell, which is “The Lost Man Booker Prize,” and I do not intend to investigate what that means.

That’s … uh, not great! I’ve read three of them, fully intend to read one more, and maybe might pick up a couple of others at some point or another, but for an award that purports to be for the best book written in English that year, I feel like I should have heard of more than a third of them. Granted, I like me some genre, but I pay attention to books. I should be familiar with more of these.

How about you? Are you shaking your head at what an uncultured swine I am right now?

(*) I also own Harrison’s Viriconium; I’m phrasing it that way because I believe it was a DNF.

(**) In fact, all of my books are rated higher than all of Harrison’s books on Goodreads. That’s … amazing.

In which I’m pretty sure I’m not dead

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

I very much had a “God, they’re all so stupid” sort of day, and I spent most of the day feeling like I was getting my ass kicked, but I left work with my assignments set up and ready to go for all of my classes tomorrow, so it couldn’t have been that bad, could it? Surely not. But this was very much a “come home and look at want ads” day. I didn’t do that; I came home and sat in my chair and finished a book instead, a book that I very much need to think about some more before I write about it.

Wolf Jesus. That book was about Wolf Jesus. I was not expecting Wolf Jesus when I picked that book up, but that’s what I got.

Anyway, there might be a post about it in the next couple of days. We’ll see how capable of coherent thought I am. Today was the last day of state testing for a while; the last couple of weeks, between Fall Break, state testing, including one day that had to be rescheduled, a field trip, and half a dozen other things, has been pure chaos, and both the kids’ behavior and my mood has suffered as a result. The boss literally ended the day with “let’s all calm down and enjoy the rest of our week” during the announcements at the end of the day, and after the kids were out of the building I sat down at my desk and just went away for half an hour. I blinked and I’d been sitting there for long enough that, had I gone out and gotten in my car, I’d have been home.

I wanted to do some video gamery tonight– I have been enjoying the hell out of Mortal Shell II— but fuck it, it’s 8:30 and pitch black outside. That’s bedtime somewhere, right?

Anybody want some art?

On By Luther M. SilerIn art2 Comments

I tried this on Bluesky and didn’t get any takers, so let’s try here: I ordered this print from Smallwhitemonster, an artist whose work I discovered through TikTok and am terribly fond of, and by a combination of shipping screw-ups and some really generous customer service I ended up with two of them. The first one is hanging on the wall right there; the second (no frame, for the record) is still in its original packaging and has been hanging out in my dining room for a couple of weeks. I wrote customer service when the second one showed up and offered to send it back to them, and they told me that wasn’t necessary, but I don’t like the idea of just throwing it away, so I’m hoping I can find someone who wants it. No charge other than shipping, as I don’t like the idea of making any money off of someone else’s art that I got for free.

The print is called “Please Stop Feeding Our Cat” and is 16″ x 20″. Drop me a comment if you’re interested and we’ll work out the details.

#REVIEW: Scion, by James Islington

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, ReviewsLeave a comment

For your edification: a brief review of a brief book.

James Islington is becoming one of those authors where I preface every mention of him with a disclaimer; he has written six books, I have bought seven of them, read roughly four and 1/4, and liked … two. Honestly, I only picked Scion up because, as a science fiction novella unrelated to any of his previous work, it promised to be different, and I figure that if I gave the guy a chance in a whole different genre and still wasn’t able to fully endorse his work, it would be okay to put him down.(*)

And … well, damn it, I would like to request to Islington that he stick to short-format science fiction for a while. He’s good at it. You can get away with a lot of shit in a standalone novella that you can’t get away with in a novel or especially a trilogy, and the kind of stuff you can get away with is exactly the kind of stuff that has historically bothered me about his work. You just need enough world building for everything to hang together, y’know? The book is 226 pages and I read it in about two and a half hours. There’s no time to explain everything! It’s no problem!

I am also a sucker for hazily futuristic worlds involving genetically and possibly mechanically augmented assassins(**), which seems like a very specific thing to be a sucker for but somehow isn’t. I like the main character’s voice, I like the overall tone of the book, I like that it’s gritty without being entirely nihilistic and twisty-turny without feeling like a puzzle box. I really enjoyed my time with this book, and in a way that was very different from the rest of Islington’s work. There are a lot of things, positive and negative, you can say about his work, but I think even his biggest fans would not describe either Licanius or Hierarchy as “fun.” This book is fun! It may not surprise you to learn that I like reading books I think are fun.

Now, that said: this is, again, a novella, and while I didn’t personally pay this much for it, the MSRP on the hardcover edition is thirty-two dollars, rather steep for a book that didn’t even last me three hours. I’m pretty sure I used cash back from my Amazon Prime card to buy this, or at least heavily subsidize it, and of course it was discounted already. But if you’re the type to want to buy this in a store that isn’t able to offer the kinds of discounts that Amazon does, maybe wait for paperback, if any such thing is coming. Or maybe not! Money’s not real, and I have a job mostly to support my book habit anyway.

(*) After buying Hierarchy 3, apparently called The Justice of One, of course. I may not read it! But I’m gonna buy it.

(**) Actual assassins, who start the book with an assassination. Lots of main character assassins don’t do nearly as much assassinating as you might expect them to.

In which I am a bad blogperson

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

I’m tired, kinda crabby, and not feeling especially well, and at 8:00 I just finished my first meal of the day.

Not really thinking especially clearly, either. Y’all be good. I’ll see you tomorrow.

One left

On By Luther M. SilerIn ReadingLeave a comment

I finished Towers of Midnight last night, which after a promising start to Sanderson’s concluding trilogy spent most of its length spinning its wheels. I’ve been doing a book a month pretty religiously since I started this, but I may go ahead and knock out A Memory of Light soon just to be finished. There’s a new John Gwynne book to get to first, though, and that’s much more important. I will almost certainly do a wrap-up post once I’m finished, but nobody wants to read that and you all know what it’s going to say by now.

One of my high school teachers passed away in the last few days at the ripe old age of 95, and while I’m not certain I’m going to write about her, I may attend the service on Monday and I’m a little twisted about it at the moment. I’d looked her up a few times over the past several years and just assumed that either there was no obituary to be found or it was eluding my Google-fu; no, turns out she was just nearly immortal, and I suspect she’d been running mostly on spite for the last couple of decades. I say that with deep affection, of course.

For now, though, the last week has been emotionally exhausting on a whole lot of levels, and I came home and immediately fell asleep in my chair for an hour or so, and I think the proper method of recovering from my week is to go hit a bunch of monsters with a giant fuck-off hammer. So I’m off to do that. I’ll see y’all tomorrow.

Can’t blog, reading

On By Luther M. SilerIn ReadingLeave a comment

Bound and determined to finish the penultimate Wheel of Time book tonight. Less than 150 pages.

LOL

On By Luther M. SilerIn Politics1 Comment

I cannot wait to vote for this man for President. Cannot. Wait.

Teachers are not really supposed to talk politics or endorse candidates in class, right? I get why that’s an expectation, although I don’t like it very much, and I think most teachers feel the same way, more or less. I have never confirmed how I have voted on any issue, although I have said things like “you have met me; your guess is probably correct” to kids before. But I will say that it was interesting to drag myself into work today, bleary-eyed and sticky in the weird way that one is after a night with little sleep, and notice just how many of the teachers in the building happened to be wearing blue. I was wearing a burgundy polo shirt, for no better reason than it was the first shirt I touched when I reached into my closet this morning, but I did make sure that all of the LED lights in my classroom were blue today. For some reason.

We were supposed to have state testing today, but it had to be cancelled at the last second because of some sort of tech issue that was either district-wide or originated at the state level, I’m not quite sure. But cancelling testing meant that everyone in the building had planned for very short class periods today and suddenly we all found ourselves with an extra 25 minutes in each class period to contend with. My car had a cylinder timing issue, and got towed to the mechanic yesterday, and after work I had to go pay for the repair, then take my rental back to the airport, then go back to the mechanic to actually pick my car up. So I didn’t get home until 6:30, which in Indiana in November is pitch fucking black. To say today was exhausting is to slightly understate things, I think.

All of that is prelude to say that last night was successful beyond my wildest dreams; I was somewhat willing to be optimistic about Texas, Maine and Michigan, but … Kansas? Mississippi??? And to be honest I’m not sure how the hell we lost Louisiana, because with all the vote that was still out in East Baton Rouge and New Orleans when I went to bed, that should have been plenty to take the win. Lauren Boebert is out. Virginia fucking Foxx is out. Kris Kobach is unemployed. Vivek Ramaswamy can slink back into the pile of semi organic goo he slithered out of. It was a good fucking night.

I don’t want to rain on my own parade, but I do think we all need to brace ourselves for an epic level of fuckery in the next two and a half months. There’s been surprisingly little yammering about the election being fixed so far, at least from what I’ve seen (and, of course, I’ve been at work all day) and it may be that we won so big that allegations of shenanigans simply can’t take hold. There’s going to be some bullshit, though. Probably a lot of bullshit. I hope the Democrats are ready for it.

And then, next January, I want these fuckers to hit the ground running, and I want this administration torn to shreds. No mercy, no quarter, and no pause. I want hearings, I want arrests, and I want fundamental fucking change. Some of these people are going to turn out to be Blue Dogs again, even if they aren’t calling themselves that (I’m looking your way, Josh Turek, and I’m very much prepared to not like you if you turn out to be another Fetterman,) but I have to feel like our majorities are big enough that we can absorb the occasional defection from a conservative Democrat from a red state. I mean, Christ, look at this:

I didn’t see anybody predicting an 83 seat majority. I sure as hell didn’t see anyone predicting what could be a 56 seat Senate, either. The first thing I want out of all of these people is a robust discussion about who leadership is going to be. I’m not as down on Hakeem Jeffries as a lot of people– the man has done a remarkable job holding his coalition in the House together over the last couple of years– but I am entirely willing to lose Chuck Schumer, and I don’t want to see either of them simply coronated.

I’m going to take a shower and go to bed early now. Regardless of whatever’s coming next, I feel a lot better about being an American right now than I did a couple of days ago.