nomadreader

I've been slowly working on this post for two weeks, but it's finally here: my 7th annual Women's Prize for Fiction U.S. Reader's Guide! Longtime readers knows this prize, known for most of its history as the Orange Prize, is my favorite literary prize. The longlist announcement is always one of my favorite moments of the year, and it shapes my reading for the months and years to come. I didn't make predictions this year, partially because the prize announced it was trimming the longlist from its traditional length of twenty titles to only twelve. (The judges ended up with sixteen titles on the longlist.) For the seventh year in a row, I'm offering my thoughts on the longlist along with information on when U.S. readers can access these titles (see my U.S. Reader's Guide for the longlists in 2016 , 2015 , 2014 , 2013 , 2012 , and 2011 . The Ones Available in the U.S. Now Hag-seed  by Margaret Atwood Little Deaths  by Emma Flint The Mare  by Mary Gaits...

The backstory: State of Happiness  was longlisted for the 2004 Orange Prize . The basics:  "Cindy Frier, author of a popular treatise on maps called Dis-location, meets Jack Stratton, a successful British news producer, at a party in New York City. Shortly after they become a couple, Jack receives a career-making promotion that takes him and Cindy to the beachy environs of Los Angeles."--publisher My thoughts: This book captured my attention right away. The book opens at a dinner party, and the characters and setting felt so alive. Cindy and her friendship with Kelly are beautifully real. Their friendship was so interesting to me that I was initially sad when Jack became the primary focus of Cindy's attention. But this isn't a novel about female friendship. It isn't even really a novel about Jack and Cindy's relationship. For awhile, I thought it was a novel about the rich metaphors of mapping and cartographer. Cindy 's work fascinated me. It'...

It's been awhile since I last Salon-ed . Almost seven months? Where has the time gone? Relatedly, I have an almost-sixteen-month-old and it will be December this week. Wow! This time last year, I made a book bucket list . And I actually read all five books! With a few extra days off this week, I decided to make a pile of all the 2015 releases I want to finish before the end of the year. It's laughably tall. Impossibly tall. I hope to read some of them this month and all of them eventually, but I already know it will never happen because there are always more books, so I'm giving myself the freedom to pick and choose from that stack as I see fit (especially as it involves two chunksters.) I'm constantly setting, breaking and revising reading goals. I spend a lot (too much?) of time thinking about what kind of reader I want to be. I'm not claiming I have the answer for all time, but I have a good answer for now: I want to read what strikes my fancy, while keeping a...

The backstory: Liars and Saints  was shortlisted for the 2005 Orange Prize . The basics: Liars and Saints  is the story of the Santerre family. Over four generations, the novel covers World War II to the present (when this book was published in 2003.) My thoughts: For years I've been saying I want to read all of the Baileys Prize longlists, but I don't actually do it, so I started a new project to at least make some progress to that lofty goal. (If I actually continue to make progress, I'll write a post about my plans.)  Liars and Saints  reaffirms why I have that goal. It's a book I had never heard of, by an author I somehow never heard of. Once I started reading it, I discovered she is someone so many of my bookish Twitter celebrity people adore. And with good reason. I'm such a fan, I checked out her other three adult books (one novel and two short story collections) from library when I finished the first chapter. (She also writes the Apothecary series for ...