It's been a while...

...since I've actually written a post (and not just copying and pasting about finds and loots). And for that, I owe to wanton laziness. And also to the inability to write reviews of late. Not that I haven't tried - the many draft copies on Blogger is my evidence.

However I squeezed myself out of inertia and here I am, blogging for a while. Mostly to reiterate my unnatural obsession with book lists - tada! The Guardian's Not The Booker Prize! Of course I have yet to read any of them. And here's why (see this is book review-related): the contemporary fiction that I've read lately has been rather disappointing. I read John Wray's Lowboy, which was quite different from other recent reads but ultimately, while interesting enough, failed to really hit me. Meg Wolitzer's The Position, while it has a potentially funny and awkwardly funny premise, it was perhaps a bit too character-driven and not what I was looking for as a good read. And perhaps the biggest readfail of all was An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England by Brock Clarke. Doesn't it have such a fun title? But its main character (the arsonist) was such a whiny fella that I returned it to the library before its due date and before reading more than 50 pages.

Here's the longlist:

Ghosts and Lightening by Trevor Byrne
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
Map Of The Invisible World by Tash Aw
Summertime by JM Coetzee
The City and The City by China Miéville
John The Revelator by Peter Murphy
Solo by Rana Dasgupta
The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton
Jerusalem by Patrick Neate
Spirit by Gwyneth Jones
This Is How by MJ Hyland
The Earth Hums in B Flat by Mari Strachan
The White Woman On The Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey
The Quiet War by Paul McAuley
The Harrowing by Robert Dinsdale
Hodd by Adam Thorpe
The Tin-Kin by Eleanor Thom
The Winter Vault by Anne Michael
White Is For Witching by Helen Oyeyemi
The Father Of Locks by Andrew Killeen
The Children's Book by AS Byatt
Stone's Fall by Iain Pears
Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie
Down On Out On Murder Mile by Tony O'Neill
Rose by Gillian Green
Cockroach by Rawi Hage
Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín
Grace, Lamar and Laszlo The Beautiful by Deborah Kay Davies
Ten Storey Love Song by Richard Milward
Tender by Mark Illis
Jeff In Venice, Death in Varanasi by Geoff Dyer
Little Gods by Anne Richards
A Kind Of Intimacy by Jenn Ashworth
Great Waters by Kit Whitfield
Black Rock by Amanda Smyth
Red Dog, Red Dog by Patrick Lane
Harare North by Brian Chickwava
Generation A by Douglas Coupland
Tomas by James Palumbo
Neverland by Simon Crump
The Lieutenant by Kate Grenville
All The Colours Of The Town by Liam McIvanney
Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin
Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie
The Outlander by Gil Adamson
How To Paint A Dead Man by Sarah Hall