With the Booker longlist out, that means betting is underway. Bookies are calling David Mitchell, Tom McCarthy, and Andrea Levy the favorites right now, with Damon Galgut the longest shot to win the prize.
The 2010 Booker Longlist Odds
On Migration
Granta asks their contributors what it means to be a migrant or a refugee in light of the crisis in Europe. Twenty-eight authors respond in visual media, personal essays, and poems. You could also read our migrations book list for more perspectives.
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I’d Prefer the Footnotes
Recommended Reading: This slick, new, annotated version of Herman Melville’s classic Bartleby, the Scrivener from the folks over at Slate. For more on Bartleby’s occupation of Wall Street, here’s a piece that should suffice.
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The Therapy Fads
“We learn how to be mad, the same way we learn how to be male or female, or how we learn how to participate in society.” On fads and mental illness.
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Kafka’s “The Country Doctor” as a film
The internet’s repository of Franz Kafka-inspired literary treats seems to have no bounds. This latest: his excellent short story “The Country Doctor” has been adapted by Japanese filmmaker Kōji Yamamura into a 20-minute animated film (subtitled). Kafka adaptations clearly aren’t going anywhere. Pair with our essay on the subtle art of rereading his most famous story.
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On Wodehouse’s Other Writing
“For a novelist, writing letters is writing that is not writing,” Ed Park says of P.G. Wodehouse’s collected correspondence, A Life in Letters. The Year in Reading alum goes on to note that “a collection of letters is the unconscious narrative the author generates over the years.”
El Presidente
Following the death of Hugo Chavez, the publishing industry is gearing up to provide retrospectives of his life. At the Christian Science Monitor, Whitney Eulich reviews Comandante, a book that claims Chavez was “this close” to becoming a dictator.
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