The Mookse and the Gripes discussion
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Our Favourite Books of 2021 - Nominations and General Chat
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The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk (translated by Jennifer Croft)
Checkout 19 by Claire-Louise Bennett
In Memory of Memory by Maria Stepanova (translated by Sasha Dugdale)
Edited because one of my original nominations was duplicated
Assembly by Natasha BrownSmall Things Like These by Claire Keegan
Panenka by Ronan Hession
Difficult to limit myself to three though...My Phantoms by Gwendoline Riley
Learwife by J.R. Thorp
Dog Park by Sofi Oksanen
Many of my favourites have already been nominated. So:Radio Joan (Kevin Davey)
The Death of Francis Bacon (Max Porter)
A New Name (Jon Fosse)
I’ve actually got probably about 10 books that I find it hard to separate.
On the Fosse Septology US readers won’t get A New Name until next year but may have read I Is Another this year. Given they are different parts of the same book should we treat them as such in voting?
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It is the first English language edition we use as the publication date regardless of whether that is UK, US, Australia or wherever. The one that did confuse me is Claire Keegan, as her book seems to have been published in French translation in late 2020, which would be weird, but it may be a similar arrangement to the new Ben Myers which is only out in German translation this year!
PS It will save me time if the nominations contain either author's names or book links - in most cases these are all but with titles that contain mostly popular words it speeds up the search!
Wendy - Assembly has already been picked so you should add an alternate choice.
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Duplicate nominations are fine, but Gumble is right that it is effectively a wasted vote (which is one of the reasons I didn't pick Assembly, A New Name or The Tomb Guardians since I knew they would have champions!)
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I look at the list and it seems more personal favorites than best books of the year. I think that echoes what I am seeing in published best books of the year lists both in the U.S. and U.K. with little consensus between all the suggestions. I will add three prize winners to give our list more legitimacy. Two are actually among my ten best books so it isn't a total cheat. Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty
Hell of a Book
The Promise
I assumed this was personal favourites ie what did we think are the best books of the year. Rather than prize winners which are typically just what 4-5 random people who don’t post here think are the best books of the year! Although I can see the argument for a Prize-of-Prizes list as well that takes prize winners and ranks those (ends up being implicit in these lists anyway as usually the major prize winners make the list and if they don’t that rather tells you something).
I assumed personal favourites, at least of the ones published within the timeframe Hugh specified. A number of my actual favourites were published way outside of those dates but I think these ones qualify:Permafrost
Strange Beasts of China
To Write as If Already Dead
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The Keegan one does look odd indeed - translation published before the original. Perhaps she didn't get a book deal initially? This does confirm the order:https://ckfictionclinic.com/claires-n...
Eligibility here (and for Women's Prize etc) seems fine though as English version is late 2021
Paul wrote: "I assumed this was personal favourites ie what did we think are the best books of the year. Rather than prize winners which are typically just what 4-5 random people who don’t post here think are t..."Nothing wrong with personal favorites. I do prefer that we do a consensus best of the year list and then a topic where we list our ten personal favorites because I allow a difference for my personal taste and critical evaluation and love to see each person's personal list. But what really motivated my comment was the lack of one Booker nominated novel at the time of my posting. The Booker was not as bad as all that, was it?
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For me it feels a little early to feel surprise at the omissions - in previous years the list has grown to 50 or 60 books, and if it gets to that size I'd be very surprised not to see A Passage North (and little scratch, and Bewilderment, and In Memory of Memory, I could go on...). The Women's Prize winner was published a month too early, as was When we Cease to Understand the World (which might make a case for allowing September 2020). But then A Ghost in the Throat was late August, and we have to put the cut-off somewhere, whatever the hard cases.
One issues with prizes as Hugh implies is that the timescales don't match calendar year (RoC for example is almost completely out and largely so is Women's Prize) - also I think we have always done this as the forum's favourite booksI think my alternate thread about Best Prize of the Year (with my leftfield suggestion) is a better place to maybe discuss if individual prizes did a good job
Well at least I did Paul a favor. Now he won't have to agonize on wheter to put Books of Jacob or No One is Talking about this last on his ratings.
Not much agonising needed. Books of Jacob has that spot sewn up. No One is Talking About This would comfortably win most overhyped book of the year for me, but not worst book.
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After the nominations are closed, so from a week tomorrow - I will announce that they are closed first thing on Monday 6th December and put the rankings thread up shortly afterwards. I don't want us to start making rankings until we know exactly which books are on the list (at the moment people may still decide to change their nominations, and I'd like everyone to be working from the same list!)
No One is Talking about This (not to be contrary to Paul, although that's fun, but because it truly is one of my favorite reads of 2021), Still Life by Sarah Winman and This One Sky Day/Popisho.
Tough but when I eliminate those already chosen and those published in 2020, I am down to four, so only one has to go! The final cut leaves as my nominees:The Twilight Zone by Nona Fernández
Zorrie by Laird Hunt
Matrix by Lauren Groff
Civilisations (aka Civilizations) by Laurent BinetThe Orphanage by Serhiy Zhadan
The Man Who Lived Underground by Richard Wright
Henk wrote: "Distant Transit by Maja HaderlapThe Membranes by Chi Ta-wei
The Employees by Olga Ravn"
The first time you mentioned The Employees in a post somewhere I was immediately snared by the story description, but I couldn't get a hold of this book anywhere. Sometime between then and now my library system bought it - woo hoo!
A lot of mine are already mentioned, so throwing in a few that I didn’t see on my quick scan:Detransition, Baby
Sorrowland
Unsettled Ground
2021 has been a great year for books. My top 3 areApeirogon Colum McCann
Lean Fall Stand Jon McGregor
Crossroads Jonathan Franzen
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Apeirogon Colum McCann
Lean Fall Stand Jon McGregor
Crossroads Jonathan Franzen"
Apeirogon was published in February 2020, so too early for this list.
I would nominate:Intimacies by Katie Kitamura
People Like Them
Harlem Shuffle
But if indeed eligible then my vote will most probably go to Civilizations, even though I read it in early 2020
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I’m surprised we haven’t seen Occupation and little scratch yet.
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They'd be on my top 10 - but not my top 3, so not on my nomination list. That said I realise one of the books I've nominated - Things We've Seen - doesn't seem to have been at all widely read here so will get few positive/negative votes (I'd already skipped another Aphasia on relative obscurity grounds)Is it too late to switch that choice to one of these two?
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Yes it does seem to have come out in US in 2020
Two of my favorites are already listed, so here are three others that I liked:Minor Detail
Piranesi
The Yield
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Oops...I must have been looking at the wrong date. (I have eye surgery scheduled for Monday, so my vision is a bit off).
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The Mookse and the Gripes
Books mentioned in this topic
Radio Joan (other topics)Panenka (other topics)
Panenka (other topics)
Radio Joan (other topics)
Radio Joan (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Ron Chernow (other topics)Joshua Cohen (other topics)
Jonathan Lee (other topics)
Agustín Fernández Mallo (other topics)
Kwon Yeo-Sun (other topics)
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As in the previous three years we will allow books first published in English in late 2020* or 2021, and for translations the earliest date (1 Oct 2020) may be a first English edition of an older book, no matter how old. Dead authors are allowed, as are dead translators.
Note that my preference is that books published in 2020 should only be nominated if you read them for the first time this year, but that is just guidance, as I have no intention of trying to check (sometimes it takes a while for books to find the right readership, particularly when prize judges surprise us).
* this is a change from the rules we have used in previous years - I would like to restrict 2020 books to ones published in the last quarter of the year.
These are the nominated books so far: