booker business

so i woke up today & lazily reached over to find the book...

& read the last 20 or so pages of "In a strange room" by Damon Galgut...

being the 6th of the 6 shortlisted books for the booker prize...

and the decision isn't being made on it until a week tomorrow - so how ahead of the game am i ladies & gentlemen?

slightly lost though now... without the need to go to the big green bookshop and swap over this book for the next one...

although i do need to pick which one i want to keep (not counting C by TomMcCarthy which i bought already)... at the moment i think it's going to be this book i finished today - more thought is required though...

and who should win?

well 1st let me give you my 6 twitter reviews:

In a strange room - Damon Galgut: Hugely powerful, sparely written at 1st but gathering like a storm, maybe a little unbalanced, beautful x (today 4th october)

The Long Song - Andrea Levy: took me awhile to get into the style but it embedded itself in my mind, great characters... evocative writing x (thursday 30th september)

Room - by Emma Donoghue... kept me close to tears most of the way through... well told, thoughtful, lovely, will stay in my head... x (saturday 25th september)

The Finkler Question - Howard Jacobson. Very funny, a little bit painful, slightly flaccid in the middle, has an ending i'm not sure about x (wednesday 22nd september)

Parrot and Olivier in America - by Peter Carey... too long, olivier's character irritating, but ended well & had good history.. too clever x (friday 17th september)

finished C by Tom McCarthy... i was left wanting more... longlisted for the booker... great writer... lovely progressions of images... x (sunday 29th august)

and the 3 that are vying for 1st place in my mind are C (Tom McCarthy), In a strange room (Damon Galgut) & Room (Emma Donoghue)...

hmmmm - i'll wait a little for the dust to settle over my reading of this last one then i'll let you know...

all before the judges make their decision (i'm aware that they all read this blog and they will find it hard to make a decision without my decision)

x

Deflea again

actually this was yesterday... the little blighters are still around so i thought maybe i did the last deflea wrong?

anyway... she forgave me almost immediately... i think because although i did lock the cat flap she didn't try and go through it... which is a pretty traumatic thing... racing away from the abusive human only to bang your head against the cat flap...

saw gong last night along with space ritual @ the forum... a friend of A's had a free ticket... steve hillage was in the band and that was nice to see... some of those gong tunes are fantastic and i'm about to fire up spotify and see if they're on there...

indeed they are... angels egg - (radio gnome invisible part 2) the 1st album i ever heard... courtesy of my brother... lovely...

the booker has begun...

i'm 160 odd pages into parrot and olivier in america by peter carey... which is good but a bit hammy so far... it turns out C by tom mccarthy did make the short list so i'm one book ahead of the game already...

this music does make me want to smoke... and smoking does not particularly agree with reading all the booker price shortlisted books before october 12th...

so there's a conflict...

anyway - happy sunday x

deflea dr john chico buarque

she's sulking somewhere... but it's done...

dr john has come back into my life, much more than before... i'd seen him on jules holland and i think we supported him once at a student ball @ warwick university... not that i saw him then or him us - (i imagine)

anyway, i was @ core on monday for a meeting and a few of us musicians killed some time jamming, a straightforward tune led by me and then a much less straightforward melange which somebody said sounded like gris-gris... dr john's 1st album...

since then i've immersed myself in 3 different albums by dr john: gris-gris, dr john's gumbo & in the right place...

'68, '72, '73,

and then chico buarque's construcao came to mind today after listening to some of the crazy arrangements on gris-gris...

i'm also continuing to write the tune i started last week on the rhodes... some lyrics are floating in...

and the sopranos is getting dark... ralphy in season 3...

oh and i've started my booker book club reading, although C by Tom McCarthy is only on the longlist, the shortlist hasn't been announced... i read an excerpt from C in the "sex" granta... what i read was great and i'm very pleased to have found another writer i like, and for this book to be at least in the longlist for the booker...

if it makes it onto the shortlist i will have begun early for the booker book club challenge of reading all 6 booker shortlisted novels in the 5 weeks between shortlist announcement & winner announcement... (i did it last year)

x

booker done tv heaven

read the last booker book this morning in bed...

j m cootzee, summertime, badly named, badly written, occasional bits of good writing but all kinds of unsatisfactory writing...

when he's writing as women I find him pretty rubbish...

so, definitely ended on a low, those 6 books I read...

also I watched monday's flashforward which was distinctly average... just like lost, take the smallest amount of storytelling you can, wrap it in the thinnest drama you can find, pretend it's fantastic...

but the day was rescued by channel 4's HBOfest from 10... trueblood & generationkill...

just wonderful...

and then there's hung.. josiah mentioned it over the weekend... any good?

my cup runneth over...

x

from bed

hmmm... a sedintary life for me, the booker prize all done... the last one I read won it, the great wolf hall... I got through 5/6 with the 6th now in my possession, I don't know if i'll read it... we'll see...

blogging from my phone, in bed, just to check it out really...

not working Wednesday but if I can i'll pick up my fender rhodes x