Every year I like to try to read my way through the Booker Prize list of 12 or 13 books, commonly known as the Booker Dozen, starting when the longlist is published in July and finishing by the time the winner is announced around November.
I like to do this for a few reasons:
Firstly, I am bad at choosing fiction books to read.
Secondly, when I do choose fiction, it tends towards the same genres and same authors every time. (We find sameness comforting, don’t we?)
Perhaps most importantly, I have found that reading the array of fiction in the Booker longlist each year is a fantastic way to read around the World – to learn about cultures and viewpoints from across the spectrum of human experience. Whether set in 1940s Ethiopia, modern-day urban Sri Lanka, frozen rural Canada, steamy Zimbabwe or the tenement blocks of 1980s Glasgow; futures of a dystopian Ireland or of space exploration and robots: I found that each Booker choice widened my view in some way. Authors often include young writers or first novelists.
Sometimes it’s a fascinating way to consider this moment in history. Recent picks have covered a wide variety of ‘hot topics’, from modern race relations in the USA to the growing role of AI in human relations. This effect is often magnified by the authors’ chosen structure – a whole book written in a Twitter-style format, for example.
Sometimes I enjoy them immensely and think about them for a long time after I put the book down. Sometimes it’s a struggle to finish. Every time is good fodder for a chat over coffee (“You’ll NEVER guess what’s happened in this weird book I’m reading…!”).
So – grab a coffee! – and welcome 😊
Rules of the game:
The Booker Prize 2025 longlist was issued on 29th July and contains 13 books. I aim to read exactly one book per week each week until the winner announcement on 10th November, with a single break scheduled around the Shortlist publication on 23rd September. (I realise this might sound like a lot of reading to some, but trust me, for me this constitutes book rationing!)
I will acquire books three at a time in a randomised order, and won’t particularly read up on any of the books or authors before starting each. (This is so that the content of each book is a surprise and I can form my own unadulterated thoughts on it. Also so I won’t be able to choose all the ones which sound most interesting to me first and be left with books I don’t really want to read 😉).
If you fancy reading along, you can find the full longlist on the Booker Prize website here: https://thebookerprizes.com
The Booker Review 