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In the world of the Booker Prizes this week: Discover our readers' pick of novels for autumn; the 2024 shortlisted authors answer our quick-fire questions; and the best ghost stories for Halloween
13 cosy reads from the Booker Library, chosen by our readers
Autumn. It’s a period of transition and change, ‘a time when the nights are sooner, chillier, the light a little less each time’. These words, written by Ali Smith in her Booker Prize 2019-shortlisted novel, aptly titled Autumn, sum up the essence of the season.
As this shift unfolds, we asked you, our readers, to suggest your favourite books to curl up with as the nights draw in (we see you with envy, Southern Hemisphere friends). You recommended books that invited escape; books that celebrated lives well lived and which prompted moments of reflection; and crucially, books about the cold that could be read in the warm.
A quick chat with the 2024 shortlistees: watch our video interviews
With the Booker Prize 2024 winner announcement just a couple of weeks away (if it’s not yet in your diary, mark it down for 12 November), we sat down our shortlisted authors – Percival Everett, Samantha Harvey, Rachel Kushner, Anne Michaels, Yael van der Wouden and Charlotte Wood – for a round of quickfire questions. They share the worst writing advice they’ve ever received, the wisdom they’d pass on to their teenage selves, how they’d spend the £50,000 prize money if they win, and much more. Here’s what they had to say…
10 of the best Booker-nominated ghost stories
While there’s a rich canon of classics and commercial favourites in the genre to plunder, beyond the tropes of haunted houses and chain-rattling apparitions there’s also a wealth of more contemporary ghost stories, with modern writers keen to reclaim and subvert the genre. By using the supernatural as a metaphor to address real-world issues, they are pushing the boundaries of what a ghost story can be – the effect of which is often far more affecting than a traditional tale of spooks and spectres.
Join us as we delve into the Booker archives to select the best ghost stories with a literary twist…. just in time for Halloween.
What’s on your TBR pile this week, readers? Which of this year’s shortlisted books are you rooting for? Let us know in the comments below…
Must read 💎💕📚💕💎
I finished James the other day these were my thoughts and comments. Only one fellow's opinion, mine. I finished reading this year's Booker Prize winner, James, it kept me going, a short little novel probably considered profound today, and parts of it were. I liked it. Everett stole from Twain, and he stole from Styron, and he added some profound thoughts. But when I compare it to the Booker Prize winner of 1992, Sacred Hunger, by Barry Unsworth, a large novel much more profound, and more ambitious; slavery and society delt with differently and more completely, to me it represents the demise of literature in the last 32 years. Comparatively Small books have become large ones... Where are the Sacred Hungers? Where are the Huckleberry Finns? Where are the Confessions of Nat Turners?