Thoughts on the 2020 Women's Prize

 

I can't believe that three years have passed since I was picked as a library ambassador for the Women's Prize. Time flies.

In 2017 I read all of the short listed books and got to pick my favourite from the list as well as getting to meet some lovely new people and to go to the prize ceremony.

This year it was all a bit different (what isn't in 2020?!) but when the prize giving was delayed from June to September I decided to try and read all of the shortlisted books and to try and pick the winner.

The short listed books were:

• Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo
• Dominca by Angie Cruz
• Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell
• A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes
• The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel
• Weather by Jenny Offill

From the outset A Thousand Ships was my favourite book, it was one of my best reads in 2019 and I still think it is fantastic. Then I read Girl, Woman, Other and got even crosser that it shared the Booker Prize with Attwood last year - it is far, far, far better than The Tesatments. I also quite enjoyed Hamnet earlier in the year.

Dominica and Weather were good reads but haven't hugely stuck with me, and I confess to being very behind the times and so only got around to reading Wolf Hall this year and not the shortlisted tome, I can't see that the quality of writing has dropped that much and so my feelings on this one are 'a good read but Haynes & Evaristo's books are better'.

The results were announced this week and Hamnet was crowned the 25th winner of Women's Prize and my run of not being able to pick the winner continues!

Having read (nearly) all of the books  and looked through my reading notes I can't say I am upset at the result - unlike last year's Booker prize - but I do wish that A Thousand Ships had won. 

If you aren't familiar with Natalie Hayne's work then I really do recommend giving her radio series a try - it is a wonderful mix of history, mythology, feminism and humour.

Final, final thoughts about the Baileys Prize

Women's Prize for Fiction ceremony and final thoughts.

Last night I was lucky enough to be invited to the prize ceremony for the 2017 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction and to be honest by the time it came to go into the event I was about ready to run away - it has been a long time since I've been to a swanky book event and an even longer time since I've been to one where I know nobody else in the room.

To be honest as I entered the fabulously decorated ballroom at the Southbank Centre I was even more overwhelmed - I was met with smartly dressed waiters with a selection of drinks, more wandering around with canapes and lots of very smartly dressed people.

My discomfort vanished really quickly as Karen and Kimberley from the Reading Agency spotted me really quickly and we soon found another library ambassador - book chat quickly followed.

The actual prize ceremony was really smoothly run, the speeches were all interesting and fun - championing books, reading, fiction and authors especially in the world we are currently living in.

On the trip down to London, and after talking with colleagues at work, I'd decided that my overall favourite was Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo - her links to Norfolk just swung it for me. I think I can also explain it and handsell it to customers slightly more easily than my other top read Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien. I was lucky enough to meet both authors at the event and they were lovely.

While the bookies were saying Naomi Alderman's The Power I was pleased to see so much love for Do Not Say on line in the days leading up to the announcement - however on the night the bookies were proved right at the dystopian, feminist Animal Farm won the overall prize.

I've been thinking about this book a lot since I finished it and while it wasn't my top read the fact that it is preying on my mind means that it must have *something* to it and I can see why it won - I'm now looking forward to talking about this, and the other 5 books, with friends and customers in the library.

After an amazing experience as a library ambassador I now have to do my thanks - to the Reading Agency for the opportunity, to the publishers for providing me with a copy of each book, to Baileys for the invite to the party last night, and also to my colleagues for letting me talk books for so long and rearranging shifts at the library so I could go to the prize!

Enough gushing - I'm off to find more great books to read and talk about!

Bailey's Prize final thoughts

It is no good - even after a week I still can't pick which book is my favourite.

I am torn between Do Not Say We Have Nothing and Stay With Me.  These two have gripped me firmly since I read them and I can't stop talking about either of them.  They are very different in many ways - but the way they both use the personal to make wider events come to life draw them together.

I know that the bookies are saying The Power is the favourite to win but I really hope either of my top books confound the odds and do win.

I am excitedly nervous about the prize ceremony tomorrow night - it has been quite a while since I've been to a book event in London, especially one with a dress code but it will be great to meet a lot of the people I've been tweeting with over the past 6 weeks.

Is this the real life?...

...Or is it just fantasy?

I have a very funny relationship with fantasy novels. There are a few authors that I adore and read and reread regularly and then there are the rest.

Just recently I have been reading books by Trudi Canavan, I love the books that she sets around the Magician's Guild. The characters come to life in a wonderful way and it makes me want to believe in the world of magic. However her books in the Age of Five trilogy leave me cold.

Tamora Pierce was the first fantasy author that I found and loved, right back in about year 9 at school. 20 years on I still pounce on her new books and everything else on the reading pile is neglected until I'm finished.

This has become harder in recent years as she no longer has a UK publisher, thankfully we now have the Internet. And good friends. Sam over at Books, Time and Silence, recently visited the States and very kindly tracked down a copy of the latest Pierce book and delivered it to me on Wednesday.

This is a collection of short stories that mostly link to characters or places that feature in her other novels. I've become a real fan of the short story over the past year and these do not disappoint. I think it must be a hard genre to write in as you have to tell a whole story, believably, in a short space of time. None of these tales left me wanting, they were all great vignettes with the trade mark strong characters and the subtle feminist message.

There are other fantasy novels out there that I like, some (limited) Pratchett, Nix, Nicholson and Gaiman all are great but ultimately there is something about the strong female characters that Canavan and Pierce create that draw me back time after time.
The Protector of the Small quartet is probably one the series that I have reread the most out of all my books and I would certainly want all four books (bound in one volume) on my desert island.

Now all I have to do is wait for the autumn and the next book in a series...I don't think it will be published before I travel to America so I think that pre-ordering is the way to go.

World Book Night Challenge 23/25

Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche

I think that this was the book that I was least looking forward too, I've avoided it since publication for some reason and then after hearing several radio programmes about it really dreaded reading it.

Well how wrong could I have been?

It was fantastic. Again set in a time and place that I knew nothing about, Nigeria in the last 1960s at the time of the Biafran War, but from page one I was hooked. I read this in eBook form on the plane and the 4 hour journey just vanished, I was so engrossed that getting off the plane and starting the holiday was a wrench!

It isn't an easy book, the characters are not always nice but they are real. Every single one leaps out of the page and exists as you read and Adichie is so good at description that I could smell Nigeria as I was reading.

This book isn't for the fainthearted, it spares the reader nothing but at the same time is utterly wonderful. This book was a great treat and one that I could have overlooked for many years without World Book Night and a personal challenge.

World Book Night Challenge 12/25

The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Mohsin Hamid

This is a book that I've picked up, looked at and then put down again on many occasions but I wish I had read it a long time ago. It blew me away.

The story telling style is so intimate, two men sitting in a restaurant in Lahore as one tells his life story to the other. One is a native Pakistani who has lived, studied and worked in America. The other is a nervous American who is uneasy in the other's company and country.

The story unfolds beautifully, it is wonderfully understated and totally enthralling. The protagonist doesn't hide his less savoury activities but they aren't extraneous to the tale, they are just what makes him the character that he is.

I'm being deliberately vague here because it is the gentle unfolding of this tale that spoke to me the most and I want everyone to have the chance to discover it for themselves. I realise that calling about a book about a religious fundamentalist 'gentle' sounds odd but it really is the best way I can think of to describe the book.

I've not been chosen as a Book Giver on World Book Night but if I had to apply again now this would be one of the books I want to share with everyone.