It's All In The Preparation (I Hope)

This is a big day for me.  This is a huge day for me.  It's the day the "Booker Dozen" gets announced, and I know this makes me sound like a big book geek, but I could hardly get to sleep last night and woke many times from Booker dreams.  I think if I called around, I wouldn't find that any of my friends or family had that experience last night.  The only "people" who I can relate to when it comes to the Booker are my virtual buddies.  And they're even more out there than I am.

So what is this literary prize that turns me into a little girl on Christmas Eve every summer?  This link will answer all your questions http://www.themanbookerprize.com/prize/about/faqs

I've been following the winners since my university days in the 80's as an English Lit major.  I would read the winner over the summer, when I had a little freedom from required reading lists.  I started trying to read the shortlist, before the prize was announced,  in 1996.  That only gave me a month to read six books (something that would have come easy if I didn't have 2 jobs) and I was usually lucky to finish 4 of them.  Last year they reduced the longlist from around 30 titles, to 12 or 13 titles, the "Booker Dozen".  There were actually people who read the longlist when it was 30 titles long, but it was more common to read about library groups who would split the list up and conquer the list as a group.  I thought I would try to read as many of the books on the longlist as I could, before the shortlist was announced, about 4 weeks later.  I put a good dent in the list and had read 5 of the 6 shortlisted books, so I got a little lazy about the longlist books I didn't get to, and didn't finish the longlist until last month.  (Not my fault - I blame A.N. Wilson's "Winnie and Wolf" - every page was a chore.  I hated that book.  I guess if I were more interested in Niestche, Wagner and Hitler, I would have enjoyed it.)

This year there is a little more time between the announcement of the longlist and the announcement of the shortlist, so I think I can do it.  I've prepared.  The laundry is all caught up.  I'm ready.