booker prize 2005

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'the sea' by john banville, standard booker material, old widower drunk flashes back to gauzy sexual awakening blahzay blah blah, compared to nabokov?!

http://books.guardian.co.uk/bookerprize2005/story/0,16347,1589284,00.html

anybody read it? anybody expected zadie not to win??

― _, Tuesday, 11 October 2005 13:54 (twenty years ago)

Nabokov is not boring. This book sounds boring.

― n/a (Nick A.), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 13:59 (twenty years ago)

i haven't read any of the books, what about you __?

― N_RQ, Tuesday, 11 October 2005 14:01 (twenty years ago)

yeah 4 real!! i wish ishiguro won even tho i didnt read his new one yet and hated remains of the day

― _, Tuesday, 11 October 2005 14:01 (twenty years ago)

xpost nah aint read none of em, i think my mom got a free copy of the barnes shes saving for me tho

― _, Tuesday, 11 October 2005 14:03 (twenty years ago)

'flashes back' in my description sounds like some intriguing nabokovian dirtiness but i really just meant he has a flashback

― _, Tuesday, 11 October 2005 14:04 (twenty years ago)

I haven't read this one, but I've read another Banville book, The Book Of Evidence, which I thought was really great. It was about this art-obsessed guy who ends up killing someone.

― jz, Tuesday, 11 October 2005 14:06 (twenty years ago)

ishiguros book sounds like the plot to some 80s anime or a playstation cut-scene

― _, Tuesday, 11 October 2005 14:06 (twenty years ago)

No way Zadie Smith was going to win. I have faith in this. I LOVED "Vernon God Little."

― ng-unit, Tuesday, 11 October 2005 14:13 (twenty years ago)

really?

― _, Tuesday, 11 October 2005 14:15 (twenty years ago)

to all 3 haha

― _, Tuesday, 11 October 2005 14:15 (twenty years ago)

The Untouchable was great.

― M. White (Miguelito), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 14:17 (twenty years ago)

Banville's a great writer. Which makes a change for a Booker winner.

― Don King of the Mountain (noodle vague), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 14:19 (twenty years ago)

I'd read Zadie, Ali Smith and Ishiguro, hating the last of these for being meh. Was invited but did not go to Julian Barnes' post-Booker party - going would have been uncool under the circumstances; also I imagine it would have been like a wake as even R4 has booked his title as book at bedtime, which is what happens to the one they think will win (the attitude was they were gobsmacked he did not).

― suzy (suzy), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 14:33 (twenty years ago)

i started reading an ishiguro book in borders once and it was a lot better than i expected from the description. plots often sound very boring. like the pat barker book im just finishing, which also won the booker prize, is about world war one and the plot description sounds boring and depressing. its an excellent book!

― minna (minna), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 14:34 (twenty years ago)

suzy do you know any other famous people?

― _, Tuesday, 11 October 2005 14:40 (twenty years ago)

I get these invites because I'm the literary editor for a magazine! My acquaintance with the writers not relevant. Stop being such a wilful cretin.

― suzy (suzy), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 14:48 (twenty years ago)

sorry!! i got invited to young jeezys birthday party

― _, Tuesday, 11 October 2005 14:57 (twenty years ago)

so, titling his novel 'the sea'- too blatant? such an unappealing appeal

― _, Tuesday, 11 October 2005 15:52 (twenty years ago)

the national book award finalists will be announced tomorrow

― _, Tuesday, 11 October 2005 15:52 (twenty years ago)

I ordered my girfriend an American advance reader copy of The People's Act of Love because she loves Russian literature and she thought it was great - said it was an excellent approximation of Russian tone and diction. She's just handed it to me and I'm really looking forward to it.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 16:27 (twenty years ago)

four weeks pass...

http://www.thebookpeople.co.uk are selling the six shortlisted books for £29.99

― Mädchen (Madchen), Thursday, 10 November 2005 11:41 (twenty years ago)

Excellent value for money, I think.

― PJ Miller (PJ Miller 68), Thursday, 10 November 2005 12:02 (twenty years ago)

... each (crosspost)

― Mädchen (Madchen), Thursday, 10 November 2005 12:41 (twenty years ago)

IU'm tempted to order them just so I can lie back and think about how much the postage would have costed.

― PJ Miller (PJ Miller 68), Thursday, 10 November 2005 12:51 (twenty years ago)

£3.50

― Mädchen (Madchen), Thursday, 10 November 2005 14:03 (twenty years ago)

Really?

Foiled again :-(

I don't want their stupid books anyway.

― PJ Miller (PJ Miller 68), Thursday, 10 November 2005 15:00 (twenty years ago)

seven years pass...

But Macfarlane praised the maturity of the work. "You read every sentence and you are astonished by its knowledge and its poise," he said.

In a way, the winner is a classic Victorian novel with murder, red herrings, conspiracies and fallen women. Macfarlane said judges had interrogated whether Catton's novel was "pastiche, is this more than neo-Victoriana? And in the end we concluded very much that it wasn't."

― Nilmar Honorato da Silva, Tuesday, 15 October 2013 22:14 (twelve years ago)

hopefully he did say that and it's not just a guardian error

― Nilmar Honorato da Silva, Tuesday, 15 October 2013 22:15 (twelve years ago)

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