Booker Prize excitement
There is much chatter in literary circles right now on the imminent announcement - Monday - of the Man Booker prize winner.
Of course, it's all a lot of nonsense. How can you possibly say that any one of these books is better than the others? In the final analysis, it is bound to be a subjective judgment. That is why there are usually bitter disagreements among the judges. Of course, if you have say, the equivalent of a Mills and Boon romantic potboiler standing against a Jane Austin, it would be an easy decision; but the shortlisted works are seldom as unevenly matched as that.
For my part, I would tip either Zadie Smith's On Beauty - which gets better the more often you read it - or my fellow countryman, Sebastian Barry's (photo) A Long, Long Way to bank the cheque.