I have seen good reviews on this years winner, but it’s not on my radar that I want to read. It’s Prophet Song by Paul Lynch. To whom ever read the book of this years winner or past years winner, is it a great read? What are your thoughts on the book/s.
Lastly, how are they nominated in the first place?
by SnooCats8890
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At this point my family has a running joke in the library about, “oh God, it won the Booker prize, put it back!” The Booker Prize goes to a type of book. Every once in a while they’ll have an amazing winner (in 1989, for example), but an incredible amount of it seems to reward “unique” approaches to prose (which is not the same thing as readable) and a type of subject matter that often verges on the pretentious.
It’s probably better to think of it the same way you would the Hugo award or the Shirley Jackson prize, not as a guide to great literature but as a guide to a type of book. Hugo’s scifi, Jackson’s horror, Booker’s for a novel about suffering in rural Ireland written (*gasp*) IN A SINGLE BOOK-LONG PARAGRAPH…
Do you have a library near you? They could get you the book and you could try it without any risk. If it sounds interesting to you, why not? If it doesn’t, then why bother just because it won a prize?