Reading 1001 discussion

Some of our members have less options available from the list and maybe they're reading other lists. This is a place to share those reads with us. Tell us what you think. Should they be considered for any future updates of the books you must read before you die?

I'm working on reading all of the Pulitzer winners. Finding that some of the early ones are a little hard to come by and some are very dated.

However, I really enjoyed Booth Tarkington's Magnificent Ambersons (1919) as well as the Orson Welles film adaptation. As for more recent books, Richard Powers's The Overstory and Trust by Herman Diaz were both absolutely amazing and should definitely be included in a 1001 update.

Jane wrote: "I'm working on reading all of the Pulitzer winners. Finding that some of the early ones are a little hard to come by and some are very dated.

However, I really enjoyed Booth Tarkington's Magnifice..."

I liked Overstory but prefer Powers older work more. I liked Trust more than In the Distance.

I also am reading the Pulitzer list but only starting in 1990 so not nearly as exhaustive as you are doing Jane. Maybe I will go back to 1917, when it started, once I have finished 1990 to now.

Glad to hear others are doing Pulitzers too. Thanks for sharing which ones you are enjoying, Jane.

I've made spreadsheets for the Pulitzer, Booker, and Giller prizes winners. Not putting any specific time line on myself for doing them, just enjoy having lists to choose from and having other things to listen to/read in between finishing 1001 list books, especially since I'm out of 1001 audios.

Currently listening to "Less", the 2018 Pulitzer winner, and really enjoying it. Also thought "the Nickel Boys" was brilliant (as is the movie that came out this year).

Also listened to the Giller winner "Bloodletting and miraculous cures" recently and really enjoyed it as well (recommend for anyone who likes realistic medical drama).

I have a spread sheet of Pulitzer and the Booker but not the Giller. (The Giller is Canadian, right?) I use the Randomizer number for TBR takedown to pick my Pulitzer and Booker. I don't always get to them but it helps narrower choices down.
I read Less awhile ago and enjoyed it.

I loved "The Nickel Boys" but have not yet read "Less". I will move that up further on my TBR list. Thank you

Yes, the Giller is the Canadian one. I might post the shortlist here when it comes out in the fall to see if anything interests folks.

Also just read today that "James" by Percival Everett won the fiction Pulitzer (a great book and one already covered by the booker shortlist last year).

Here's my read list from Pulitzer..
Pulitzer
1. 1919 THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS - Booth Tarkington Hoopla, 11/20/22
2. 1921 THE AGE OF INNOCENCE - Edith Wharton
3. 1922 ALICE ADAMS - Booth Tarkington
4. 1925 SO BIG - Edna Ferber8. 1926
5. ARROWSMITH - Sinclair Lewis (Declined) library
6. THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY - Thornton Wilder
7. 1932 THE GOOD EARTH - Pearl Buck
8. 1935 NOW IN NOVEMBER - Josephine Winslow Johnson 5/27/21
9. 1937 GONE WITH THE WIND - Margaret Mitchell
11. 1939 THE YEARLING - Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
12. 1940 THE GRAPES OF WRATH - John Steinbeck
13. 1943 DRAGON'S TEETH - Upton Sinclair
14. 1945 A BELL FOR ADANO - John Hersey
15. 1951 THE TOWN - Conrad Richter
16. 1953 THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA - Ernest Hemingway
17. A DEATH IN THE FAMILY - James Agee
18. 1960 ADVISE AND CONSENT - Allen Drury 3/27/21
19. TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD - Harper Lee
20. 1965 THE KEEPERS OF THE HOUSE - Shirley Ann Grau OWN audible play 3/23
21. 1966 THE COLLECTED STORIES OF KATHERINE ANNE PORTER - Katherine Anne Porter READ some
22. 1967 THE FIXER - Bernard Malamud
23. 1969 HOUSE MADE OF DAWN - N Scott Momaday, Nov 2023
24. 1972 ANGLE OF REPOSE - Wallace Stegner OWN 2/11/23
25. 1973 THE OPTIMIST'S DAUGHTER - Eudora Welty
26. 1975 THE KILLER ANGELS - Jeff Shaara
27. 1976 HUMBOLDT'S GIFT - Saul Bellow
28. 1979 THE STORIES OF JOHN CHEEVER - John Cheever Read some
29. 1980 THE EXECUTIONER'S SONG - Norman Mailer
30. 1981 A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES - John Kennedy Toole
31. 1982 RABBIT IS RICH - John Updike
32. 1983 THE COLOR PURPLE - Alice Walker
33. 1987 A SUMMONS TO MEMPHIS - Peter Taylor
34. 1988 BELOVED - Toni Morrison
35. BREATHING LESSONS - Anne Tyler OWN
36. 1992 A THOUSAND ACRES - Jane Smiley OWN 4/20/21
37. 1994 THE SHIPPING NEWS - E Annie Proulx
38. 1995 THE STONE DIARIES - Carol Shields
39. 1998 AMERICAN PASTORAL - Philip Roth
40. 1999 THE HOURS - Michael Cunningham
41. 2001 THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY - Michael Chabon
42. 2003 MIDDLESEX - Jeffrey Eugenides
43. 2004 THE KNOWN WORLD - Edward P. Jones
44. 2005 GILEAD - Marilynne Robinson
45. 2006 MARCH - Geraldine Brooks
46. 2007 THE ROAD - Cormac McCarthy
47. 2008 THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO - Junot Diaz
48.2009 OLIVE KITTERIDGE - Elizabeth Strout
49. 2011 A VISIT FROM THE GOOD SQUAD - Jennifer Egan
50 2013 ORPHAN MASTER'S SON - Adam Johnson OWN
51. 2014 THE GOLDFINCH - Donna Tartt
52. 2015 ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE - Anthony Doerr
53. 2016 THE SYMPATHIZER - Viet Thanh Nguyen
54. 2017 THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD - Colson Whitehead
55. 2018 LESS - Andrew Sean Greer READ 12/22/21
56. 2019 THE OVERSTORY - Richard Powers OWN
57. 2021 The Night Watchman (hoopla, audio) COMPLETED 1/3/21
58. 2023 Trust
59. 2023 Demon Copperhead
60. 2024 Night Watch
61. James - Percival Everett

Nice list Kristel! Most of my Pulitzer reads are 1001 books, but I've read a few others too since starting it intentionally this year, and I'm enjoying it :)

1 The Age of Innocence
2 The Bridge of San Luis Rey
3 The Good Earth
4 Gone with the Wind
5 The Grapes of Wrath
6 The Old Man and the Sea
7 To Kill a Mockingbird
8 The Optimist's Daughter
9 Humboldt's Gift
10 The Executioner's Song
11 A Confederacy of Dunces
12 Rabbit Is Rich
13 The Color Purple
14 A Summons to Memphis
15 Beloved
16 The Shipping News
17 The Stone Diaries
18 American Pastoral
20 The Hours
21 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
22 Middlesex
23 The Road
24 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
25 A Visit from the Goon Squad
26 The Goldfinch
27 Less
28 The Nickel Boys
29 Night Watch
30 James

Amanda wrote: "Nice list Kristel! Most of my Pulitzer reads are 1001 books, but I've read a few others too since starting it intentionally this year, and I'm enjoying it :)

1 The Age of Innocence
2 The Bridge o..."
I am always amazed how much Canadian’s know of the US. I certainly will start following the Giller list as I do try to read Canadian authors. Some of my Pulitzer’s I read as a youth when still in school. Probably they should be rereads. I’m just not good at doing rereads.

Yeah it's kind of wild...people here frequently joke that many Canadians know more about American media/politics than our own. We get all of the American major channels, streaming services, radio, and book publishing houses, and ours are often smaller in budget and marketing in comparison.

This is such a pervasive phenomenon that we have a set of laws called "CanCon" that dictates what percentage of Canadian content HAS to be on a Canadian radio or television station. It's often a topic of conversation here surrounding whether this keeps Canadian art alive and distributed, or whether it limits the freedom of what stations can put out. Ironically, the tariff wars have made Canadians the most interested they've been in Canadian politics and products in decades.

I always recommend looking into our literature, music, movies, tv, and art to non-Canadians. A lot of our great work kind of stays in the country, and there are some real hidden gems made here.

Amanda wrote: "Yes, the Giller is the Canadian one. I might post the shortlist here when it comes out in the fall to see if anything interests folks.

Also just read today that "James" by Percival Everett won th..."

Hi Amanda -- James will probably be my next book. Do you recommend revisiting Huckleberry Finn first? I haven't read it since high school and I'm wondering if a refresher would make me enjoy/understand the Percival book more.

I think it might be good to read Huck Finn first if your memory of it is sketchy.

Agreed. If you remember the plot progression it's all good, if not, it will enrich your reading of James to revise Huck Finn.

Kristel, impressed by how many fiction Pulitzer-winners you've read. I try to read at least one a year. I read James recently, just before it won this years'. Much of the Huck Finn story came back to my memory as I read it. Last year I read Pulitzer-winners Liliana's Invincible Summer, which is a creative nonfiction classified as fiction, and Invisible Child (nonfiction).
I've read several nonfiction books this year that I liked: Fire Weather by Canadian writer Vaillant, Always Another Country by South African/Zambian writer Msimang and Portrait of an Artist about Georgia O'Keefe which inspired me to buy a nice large print of one of her works.

George P. wrote: "Kristel, impressed by how many fiction Pulitzer-winners you've read. I try to read at least one a year. I read James recently, just before it won this years'. Much of the Huck Finn story came back ..."

I recently read Summer For the Gods which won the History Pulitzer in 1998 and I try to read Bookers or Pulitzers every month but not always able to to do that. Which print did you buy? I have a large print of Starry Starry Night on my wall.

The Booker longlist was announced recently: any else doing the Booker nominees this year? I usually do just the shortlist when its announced, but I've sourced the majority of the longlist noms on audio already and think I'll attempt that this time.

Amanda wrote: "The Booker longlist was announced recently: any else doing the Booker nominees this year? I usually do just the shortlist when its announced, but I've sourced the majority of the longlist noms on a..."

As always, there seems to be a lot of interesting books on the list! I'll look forward to your reviews. However, I won't be getting to them any time soon. I am presently struggling(!!) through The Piano Teacher. I am not enjoying it so am progressing slowly and breaking it up with Golden Age mysteries and other fun, and/or fluffy books.

Many do look very interesting, and I suspect the one Canadian nominee will end up on the Giller list as well.

I also wasn't huge into the Piano Teacher, so I don't blame you for inserting some more fun books along the way. I also really enjoy Golden age murder mysteries and want to listen to more Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers audio next year :)

Amanda wrote: "The Booker longlist was announced recently: any else doing the Booker nominees this year? I usually do just the shortlist when its announced, but I've sourced the majority of the longlist noms on a..."

I've read Audition and Flesh so far.

I've read Piano Teacher twice. It is a dark book. Hard to find anything blood to say. Reading a nice who dun it once in awhile is always good. Just read Mrs Pollifax on Safari. I read The Adversary recently which is a Canadian author. Recommend that one. And I would like to read The Land in Winter but it is not available yet in the US.

I also usually only read the Booker short list but there are a number for short books on the long list so I may read more than one of those.

I have discovered a modern author who should be on the 1001 list if there is ever an update, so I'm going to put Laurent Binet on people's radar if you don't know him. HHhH is great WWII and The Seventh Function of Language a murder mystery about something that probably wasnt - but both also metafiction about history and knowledge. His newest Persepctive(s) is making a splash and is fun but actually less intellectual than the others (maybe why its more popular lol).

Jenna wrote: "I have discovered a modern author who should be on the 1001 list if there is ever an update, so I'm going to put Laurent Binet on people's radar if you don't know him. HHhH is great WWII and The Se..."

I’ll check it out.

I did successfully read all of the Booker longlist right before the winner announcement this year, and thought I'd share my (highly subjective) short reviews in case anyone is thinking of reading some of them:

1) Flesh Was this year's winner. It follows a Hungarian man named István as he raises through the social ranks of working class odd-job man in Hungary to a rich Londoner. He mostly does this through becoming the lover of a rich British socialite who he meets through being her chauffeur. On one hand, there is an attempt to do something unique here by telling story of a protagonist who largely does not have much internal monologue, ideology, or a rich inner life and lives in a bit of a flow state with circumstance. On the other, this made me feel like the book was lacking a bit of depth, and the focus on an under-reflective man and his interest in sex feels like a bit of a regurgitation of 'dude-lit' from the 70s-80s that I've read enough of on this list. I gave it 3 stars and thought it was middle of the road.

SHORTLIST:

2) The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, by previous Booker winner and 1001 list author Kiran Desai. Is an epic tome about modern Indian Americans Sonia and Sunny and their story for love and belonging that spans both countries and other places across the globe. They start a relationship in India that falls through, and later reconnect in the US by chance as so much has happened in their lives since. The cast of characters-including both protagonists families- all feel fleshed out and interesting (and often eccentric), and very real to modern life. This one felt very successful to me as a truly contemporary book for our times and ruminated on themes like tradition versus progress, the complexity of a lot of people's truly international identities and how we square with them, and a sense of loneliness and alienation in a world that paradoxically feels more physically connected than other points in history. Was a tiny bit overlong but well done and I gave it 4 stars.

3) The Rest of Our Lives I truly hated this book. If I can summarize it briefly I'd call it "WASP slop". It pretty much says so itself at the beginning where it describes the family mother as being "Jewish, but otherwise a WASP", which I thought at first could be an interesting book exploring that contrast, but no, it's said so you know they are like every other white upper middle class American family and moves on. The prose quality wasn't terrible but the plot, characters, and narration felt so flat and predictable that it was aggressively boring and mediocre. The husband and wife have a loveless marriage and she cheated on him once because of this. Their daughter is getting an unlikely ride to an Ivy league if you based it on anything other than class (she's a noncommittal musician who's rebellion is buying thrift clothes and listening to Nirvana. Her dad prefers the Eagles- of course he does). She's wondering if she'll stay with her high school boyfriend after they go to different ivy leagues- he does sports. One of the father's friends is a basketball coach getting investigated for sexual harassment- he wonders if wokeness has gone too far and the really important thing is college level basketball. There were no original thoughts here, I gave it 1 star.

4) The Land in Winter A lyrical but also grounded novel about Britain's west country "big freeze" of 1963 and how that affected the lives and dramas of the people living there. It's one of those "illuminating the profound feelings in small lives" types of realism novels, if you are a fan of that, I tend to be. People contend with the threat of losing their farm to frost, feeling quarantined in the country after moving from London, mental health, and the ways we embrace and reject our communities and the consequences of each. Not super exciting, but hypnotic and deeply human. I gave it 4 stars.

5) Flashlight An immensely twisting plot about the fact that protagonist Louisa's father did NOT drown off the coast of Japan in 1978. She knows she saw him being pulled onto another boat, but the adults don't believe her. Well, it turns out her father wasn't Japanese as she believed, but a North Korean that did not go back to the home country with the rest of his family did following the civil war. I won't spoil the rest but the way everyone's story and perception of reality is shaped by what they have been led to 'not know' leads to a fascinating tale that does feel like a metaphor about the Korean war itself and how everyone loses in complex multi-sided situations of hiding history, division, propaganda, dehumanizing others, and gaslighting against seeking for the truth impoverishes an individual and a culture. I gave it 5 stars and was hoping it was going to win.

6) Audition is an odd post-modernisty novella in two acts. First, an actress comes face to face with a young man claiming to be her son- although given the timeline turns out to be impossible. Then, her and husband experience the difficulties of raising this boy who has always been in their house, with conflicting details. Reality unfolds increasingly near the end as it begs the questions of where does 'authentic' reality and performing life overlap as the same experiences, and can we be in conversation with multiple conflicts 'truths' in our lives? What is performance and authenticity mean in themselves and is that distinction real and meaningful? I gave it 5 stars for being intriguing and successfully giving an eerie prose quality and bending the limits of reality/fiction.

LONGLIST:

7) Endling A twisty and darkly-comedic at times tale about extinction and the outset of the war in Ukraine. It asks what is the value of life, and fights against the notion that we can create a legitimate relative value system at all. It follows this theme by also fighting against the implicit societal ranking system of who has 'enough trauma' to speak on a humanitarian issue. The plot follows several characters: one a Ukrainian Canadian biologist who studies 'endlings'- the last of a species, and is in Ukraine to see if a certain snail is really the endling of his kind , who funds her research by kind-of running mail order bride tours for bachelors. It also includes sisters posing as perspective brides, posing as wannabe feminist terrorists, who are really trying to draw out their lost mother who used to be one, and a Ukrainian-Canadian Bachelor trying to get in on the program. Wild hijinks and genuine tragedy abound on the same day that Russia invades Ukraine. Even the author appears in this book and 'ends' it half way through before it continues. I loved this book, but admit fully to my bias as a Canadian asexual woman with a biology degree who never thought there would be a protagonist that similar to me in a book. Biases aside, it mixed tones really well, was really unique, and beautifully speaks about the value of life. I gave it 5 stars and was hoping this would be the winner before the shortlist was announced. On the bright side, because it was published later this year it can potentially be nominated for next year's Giller prize.

8) Love Forms Beautifully written, emotional and bittersweet book about one woman's quest to find the daughter she gave up for adoption when she was a young unmarried mother in Trinidad. It flashes back and forth between the Trinidad of her youth and modern London where she is searching, and also that of the woman who comes forward suspecting she is her daughter: who was adopted in Venezuela and grows up in Italy. It explores themes of the trade-offs between different cultures (privacy versus community as a big example), coming to terms with one's life and trauma, self forgiveness and acceptance, and how close we all all to living radically different lives than we could have. It gave this one 4 stars, and recommend the audio version.

9) The South is another beautifully written emotional and bittersweet book: this one about a young Malaysian boy (Jay) and his coming of age and coming out when his family moves from Kuala Lumpur to an inherited old farm in the rural south. There are many deeply felt tensions in the book: city vs rural life, class conflict between Jay's family and that of the caretakers of the farm, between who Jay is supposed to be and who he is, sexual and romantic tension with the caretaker's son Fong. The narrative is consumed by Jay's internal pressures versus his desire for love and liberation from many constructed barriers, and I did feel them as a reader. I gave this 4 stars, and also recommend the audio.

10) Universality wild little book about how spin and 'fake news' can lead to people cultivating and holding two very different versions of the same tangible reality. It's all different perspectives on what happened in an incident where people of many different social and political strata were at a party (an illegal one during Covid lockdown) where someone gets smashed in the face with a gold bar. An opportunistic journalist, an affluent banker, a culty dirtbag anarchist group, a layabout who is pissed they excommunicated him, and a right-wing sensationalist 'journalist' that is clearly a great send-up of Katie Hopkins all feature in this raucous satire. I gave it 5 stars, I love this kind of thing when done well.

11) One Boat I have no strong feelings about this one. A writer visits a Greek coastal town twice many years apart, after each of her parents dies. Things have changed between these times and her relationships to the people she met before does as well, sometimes culminating in romance. The booker website says it covers themes of " identity, free will, guilt and responsibility with nuance" and I guess that is correct, it just didn't excite me plot or worldview wise. 3 stars.

12) Seascraper Is another ""illuminating the profound feelings in small lives" story like Land in Winter, and is definitely a prime example of subtle working-class realism. The plot and dialogue used by the characters is simple, but the story itself is filled with deep longing and dreams of a better life and what that means. A humble British Seascraper named Thomas lives a pretty repetitive life taking his cart everyday to push along the ocean floor to collect shrimp to sell. He lives with his mother, is too nervous to tell a local girl he loves her, and indulges in his love for folk music when he can. One day a man claiming to be a Hollywood location scout shows up and teases Thomas about a shiny new life, however, not everything is as it seems, and a meaningful life is what you make it. 4 stars.

13) Misinterpretation Another wild twisty tale, but this time about an Albanian American interpreter who becomes overly attached to a torture survivor from the Kosovo war that she interprets for at therapy sessions. She is married to a non-Albanian, and also divorced from an abusive Albanian who may be stalking her. things escalate and she starts to feel like she is leading a double life between 2 identities, trying to reconcile who she really is and how much does she owe her people. It was a really interesting take on trauma-bonding, what we owe to our cultural roots, assimilation, and the alienation of the immigrant experience. I also gave this one 5 stars.

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/... Good job Amanda. I haven't read any of those.

Thanks Amanda for the Booker reading roundup! Thankfully you only hated one. I've now added a whole lot of books to my overburdened TBR list.

WOW Amanda -- a lot to read. Thanks for sharing!

Thanks Kristel, and no probs Valerie, and Jane! I'm also trying to finish all of the Giller longlist this month and may post reviews for anyone interested in that as well.

Amanda wrote: "Thanks Kristel, and no probs Valerie, and Jane! I'm also trying to finish all of the Giller longlist this month and may post reviews for anyone interested in that as well."

I will be! There are at least a couple that are on my radar, and I would be interested in what you think.

Rad, I have a few to finish and then will do :)

As promised, here are my (super subjective) reviews for the biggest Literature Award in Canada- the 2025 Giller Prize Longlist.

1) Pick a Colour was this year's winner, making author Lao-Canadian author Souvankham Thammavongsa a two-time winner (her previous work How to Pronounce Knife: Stories is definitely worth the read). It is a strong novella that follows nail technician Ning (called Susan at work- as all her fellow nail techs are) as she looks from the outside-in at the world or privilege that she serves, and the gossip among the other Susans, Pervading the novel is her deep ambiguous desire for something deeper with the other girls, and in her life in general. It explores themes of the disconnect between the affluent even as they share the same space, the liminal spaces of being part of the Asian diaspora, connection, isolation, and having value in a "small life" really well. I gave it 4 stars and found it to be a deserving winner.


SHORTLIST:

2) The Tiger and the Cosmonaut was my favorite book I read across the longlist and was rooting for it to win. Caspar- an openly gay Chinese-Canadian man- and his partner Anthony return to Caspar's small town when his dad disappears so they can join the search. This brings Caspar back to a bizarre and traumatic incident from his childhood involving a twin brother and exchanged tiger and cosmonaut costumes on Halloween. The plot gets twisty and deeper until you are left with a moving story about the repression/oppression to triumph and healing of the family. Themes covered include the complexity of identity (race, culture, sexuality, expectations put upon you), internalized homophobia, and the healing power of the truth. I gave this one 5 stars.


3) The Paris Express by Emma Donahue (known for writing Room). This novel uses the real-life 1895 derailment at the Paris Montparnasse train station (feel free to google- the picture of the train hanging out of the station window is a little wild) as the backdrop for the interactions between so many characters that define the time (the cast is half fiction, but some of the actual train riders are fictionalized here as well). A female anarchist terrorist, affluent business owners, working class train workers, and a family with a terminally ill child all converge in the runaway train as they consider how does one live in, adjust to, and shape the ever-changing modern world. It works as both an interesting story of the historical times and as a parable for modern readers about what we can do (if anything) when the world seems to moving ever faster forward with or without our consent. I gave it 4 stars.

4) The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus is mostly a slice-of-life/interpersonal drama about the love life, friendships, academic struggles, and the draw of returning home and to what is safe as a Canadian student Pen goes to an affluent school in Scotland. I guess there is also some mystery and rich people stuff type shenanigans in there. I'm going to honest: I found this one really boring. I don't think it succeeded at making Pen or her life seem engaging to me, but I'll admit I subjectively don't tend to enjoy books focused mostly on interpersonal drama. I just didn't care what happened. 2 stars. There were much stronger books on the longlist that could have replaced this one.

5) We Love You, Bunny admittedly...I DNF'd this one. It's the only book I can remember not finishing as an adult. So this is actually the sequel to the author's previous book (just "Bunny"), and essentially retells the story of the previous book through the eyes of the villains. For context, the first one (which I haven't read and likely will not based on this one) is about a young woman doing a MFA in literature at an affluent New England Private University, where she writes about the 'Bunny' clique (fellow female students) actions towards her through the metaphor of actual battle royale style violence. This time the other Bunnies (they all call each other Bunny)...lock her in an attic to force their version of events on her. It's like if The Secret History was intentionally low brow. The positive reviews called it an original satire against the pretension of the literary establishment...but it just didn't do this successfully for me (and the fake saccharine voice the audiobook used combined with the prose style drove me nuts and I just couldn't keep at it). First complaint is that it didn't seem original at all to me: there is a movie about "what if girl drama was presented as actual violence/war" every 20 years: Heathers if you are gen X, Mean Girls if you are a millennial, Bottoms if you are gen Z. I've enjoyed all of these, but I find it works so much better in a high school setting and before I called it quits it felt like this one wasn't adding anything new- maybe if someone wants to finish it they can tell me differently.

In this case you have high caliber MFA students speaking like semi-illiterate highschoolers and part of the prose is emojis (including when their 'distinguished prof' speaks to them in literature seminars?). It just seems like the opposite demographic to use to set a believable story where you defy standardized English. Like, James Kelman's work in Glaswegian, and The Color Purple being in Southern AAE works because they are attesting that poor and marginalized populations left out of the institutions of standardized English still have profound thoughts and lives. This book just made it seem like everyone involved would have never made it into this school. The fact that it reveals what happened under the metaphors in the first book also seems to undermine the premise of its predecessor. Alright, rant over. Would like to hear from others if they've read/will read it if they have different thoughts but I gave this 1 star and would have definitely replaced it with a book from the longlist.

Longlist to follow :)

Great reviews! I haven't read Pick a Colour yet, but I am pretty sure I was pressing How to Pronounce Knife: Stories into people's hands after reading it, so I am looking forward to her novella.

I've heard similar thoughts on books 4 + 5.

I assume everyone in this group is quite highbrow.... so I'm going to bring the tone down here - ha, ha. I just finished listening to The Land That Time Forgot; and it was fun. I quite enjoy Burroughs pulp novels and would have happily spent 15 cents in 1916 for this. These pulp writers like Burroughs fascinate me - of course, they are aiming for the 'general reader' and they hit all the buttons - adventure, romance, manly men, intrigue - and yet the imagination is wild. I am a fan of science fiction + fantasy and I find these novels so interesting as they relate to those genres. Golden age and contemporary writers of those genres would probably like to deny a connection, but I definitely see one.

Thanks Valerie! I also try to push How to Pronounce Knife onto others too lol: it is one of my favorite Giller winners.

And yeah, I did look up reviews of #4 and 5 after reading (or semi-reading) them because I thought I must be missing something, and yup...many people feel the same. I'm honestly not sure why the were shortlisted- or even longlisted for that matter. Which is a shame because there were a lot of gems on the longlist,

Valerie wrote: "I assume everyone in this group is quite highbrow.... so I'm going to bring the tone down here - ha, ha. I just finished listening to The Land That Time Forgot; and it was fun. I qu..."

Oh I enjoy a good campy adventure story too. I think Rice-Burroughs does appear a couple times on the list as well. I'll add this to my big ol to read list :)

Amanda wrote: "As promised, here are my (super subjective) reviews for the biggest Literature Award in Canada- the 2025 Giller Prize Longlist.

1) Pick a Colour was this year's winner, making au..."

I have not read Pick a Colour but I did read, We Love You, Bunny and I did not like it. I hated the structure. I liked The Paris Express.

I have the exact same feelings as you Kristel.

Alrighty, let's start the longlist:

6) You've Changed by Ian Williams (former Gillar winner for his novel Reproduction). I will admit that I thought Reproduction was stronger, although I'm still not fully sure about how I feel about this book. It follows shallow people, but isn't necessarily a shallow story, and where some of the protagonist dialogue was sincere or satire wasn't always clear to me. Sad man's wife Princess is always getting extreme plastic surgery and is addicted to the trappings of luxury, and he finds it hard to desire her now. Some of the writing around her veers into the misogynist "shallow bitch bleeds regular man dry territory" but how much of that we are supposed to take as face value versus parody of these thoughts is somewhat ambiguous. The protagonist becomes obsessed with the gym and ends up in a somewhat bizarre are they or aren't they homoerotic friendship with a fitness influencer/health guru influencer fraud and of course this all comes to a dramatic head and the narrative gets more unhinged and philosophical. It explores who societal pressures can cause people to try to change themselves for partners or friends in a way those people actually don't even want, the 'male loneliness epidemic' and how valid this concept is or isn't, and the fraudulence of identity in the social media over -public world. It was painful for me at first and had some good points by the end and I gave it 3 stars.

7)Other Worlds: Stories from another previous Giller winner: Andre Alexis. His previous book, fifteen dogs, is a brilliant but brutal masterpiece. This book was perfectly fine but not as impactful for me. In this one a Trinidadian Obeah man dies and in reincarnated 100 years later as a Canadian elementary school boy who has memories of this past life. Further stories introduce a caretaker of mysterious bags tied to a ceiling, and the complex story of a painter. Things converge in a way that reflects on the interconnectedness of all things and the strange magic in reality. 3 stars.

8)An Astonishment of Stars: Stories is a beautiful collection of slice of life stories featuring predominately South Asian Canadian women. 2 sisters learn to love each other again after falling for the same pop idol, a woman learns to bake a part of a scheme to get money by winning the Great Canadian Baking Show and goes home first but gains actual value and friendship along the way, someone truly sees the sky for the first time. It tends to be very touching (but not schmaltzy) yet snarky and honest looks at the profundity of regular lives, and navigating the expectations and stereotypes of being a South Asian woman in the Western world. It also makes use of perceived shallowness, making it part of the deep texture of the prose, and I feel this one pulled it off better than You've Changed. I gave it 4 stars.

9)We, the Kindling Is quite a serious story following the lives of three women from their adolescence to how there lives turn out-and where they turn up, after coming of age during the Kony war-lord regime in Uganda. It is at times intense, but never veers into trauma-porn territory, and works more effectively because the protagonists are given so much regular humanization in their younger days and in their lives after what they survived. There is no melodramatic total free victory or fleeing into a miraculous life after being a refugee- just a reminder that so many regular humans with regular lives have been subjected to so much traumatic terror that no one deserves. It felt very prescient and I gave it 5 stars. I was surprised to find it didn't make the shortlist.

10)Sugaring Off by Fanny Britt (not a different book by the same name by another author), is an exploration of privilege, grief, and the destruction of expected roles and relationships. Affluent couple Adam and Marion lives are flipped upside down when Adam surfs into a young black women named Celia at Martha's Vineyard, leaving her debilitated. Racial and socioeconomic privilege is discussed- although I think if the narrative had fleshed out Celia more than Adam's guilt it would have been stronger. Adam, a celebrity chef, returns to his hometown in Quebec and starts up a Sugar Shack (Cabane a sucre) to try to move on and use this venture to displace his guilt and deteriorating relationship with Marion and those around him. The Sugar shack/Cabane a sucre is a foundational part of Quebecois culture- maple farms where syrup is tapped from the trees and turned to taffy by being rolled in the snow (the "sugaring off" from the title), and communal heavy meals are eaten together after the long harvesting day. It becomes a central metaphor for Adam misunderstanding what he truly needs (giving back to community, connection to others, a sense of collectivism. knowing where you belong), and distorting it into a need to continue material success and move on. A lot of the plot felt a little flat for me but the backstory on growing up around the kitchen in rural Quebec and what the sugar shack represents did get to me. I gave it 3 stars overall.

....And now even more longlisters because it was a VERY robust list this year.

11)Wild Life: I loved this book and admit to being totally biased towards it. The Author- Amanda Leduc- is disabled with both cerebral palsy and separate spasticity issues from having a brain cyst removed. I'm a different Amanda with ME and spasticity issues and a pituitary lesion I found out about recently. Listening to this book was like hearing my own thoughts refracted through a wild magical realism prism. Written in connected vignettes, various stories show the tension between 'nature' (represented by speaking hyenas who appear to the various characters and encourage them to leave the situations they feel bound to) and 'doctrine' represented by the fictional church of ladder day saints (yes you read that right- the idea is that they climb the ladder of progress through their faith to become whole and perfect in body in heaven). It also applies many instances of realities and technologies that do not fit our own to represent how the nature of how things really all gets distorted when exempting the viewpoints of the ill/disabled.

Through these 2 major forces, the book cultivates a philosophy that challenges the ideas of many religious (and some non-religious institutions) that suffering to get a 'whole body' as the ultimate good reward is inherently ableist and fails to understand that illness, deformity, and disability are morally neutral parts of nature (think faith healing mega churches who bleed hopeful attendees dry financially, and new AI cultists assuming the next step of evolution is to free disabled and ill people from their horrible human bodies). Even if in good intention, this thinking stigmatizes the ill/disabled as broken, and because it adopts either the divine or science/tech as the one and only big thing to be done, it makes these people less likely to invest in making the world less structurally ableist (in both social conception and literal infrastructure) so that it is just kinder to ill/disabled people without a miracle fix. On the other hand, the hyena parts of the book lifts up the notion of illness/disability/body difference as inherently natural, and fitting into the idea of evolution and natural selection in a different way than most people assume. Often there is an assumption that 'survival of the fittest' means that the ill/disabled were born to not survive or are against the aims of nature: but natural selection is random and without intent- illness/disability is neutral and does not confer worth of a life, and that 'fitness' and 'adaptation' is contextual. A disabled person who uses aids/finds lower effort ways to do things may become more innovative than someone who has not had to, myself and many of my chronically ill friends emotionally adapted to the covid lockdown easier than the average person because we learned how to be alone/survive not being able to go out whenever you please. This was a 5 star read for me, second best of the whole longlist in my opinion, and I only put Tiger and the Cosmonaut first because it was a bit more accessible for the average reader to fully understand, and I know this one is more esoteric, I just happen to be in the in-group.

12)The Sideways Life of Denny Voss: it took me a minute to get into the writing style of this one, but once I did I found it to be a darkly funny and but also reflective book. Like sugaring off, this one also deals in the darkness of privilege, but I feel it was more successful here, in part because it follows and asks you to emphasize with the underdog rather than the established party. It's hard to say a lot more in this respect without giving spoilers as the plot is satisfyingly twisty. But, the basic premise is that it is written from the perspective of a neurodivergent/intellectually disabled young man named Denny Voss who is abruptly arrested one night for murder when he claims he was holding a bundle of guns to get rid of them safely at the police station. He has been arrested before for trying to smuggle a goose named Tom Hanks across the border into Canada (his family lives in Minnesota). As a psychiatrist arrives to help unravel Denny's case, many things traumatic, surreal, trashy, and kind of touching come to light. I'd say it's like if Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time was mixed with a hint of Vernon God Little. I gave this 5 stars and would have put it on the shortlist.

13)Still: a haunting novella about the lives of homeless people living through the housing and drug crisis in Kelowna, British Colombia. It is framed through one woman's search for her missing friend from her street family over the course of a few days. Content warning: it involves depictions of dangerous sexwork, murder, assault, abuse, extreme poverty, and extreme drug use for anyone sensitive to these topics. It is a heavy read but like We, the Kindling, does not fall into the trap of trauma porn. Instead, the almost casualness of how the protagonists accepts these things as part of her everyday existence is what makes it chilling and easy to empathize with the street community. The overrepresentation of First Nations people in BC's homeless communities is also discussed. Joanna Cockerline, the author, wrote this book based on her real experience in street outreach and it comes across. 4 stars.

14) The Road Between Us- A strong story that uses an interesting narrative technique- it's like a literary game of telephone. The story starts with one character (a woman-now married- meeting up with a lost university flame), and then in the next chapter shifts the pov/protagonist/story to someone else mentioned in the previous story. As the chain grows longer from perspectives both close to and distant from the original character/incident, a whole web of people's lives emerges, showing a picture more illuminating and more contradictory to the one before it, before the narrative circle closes at the end. It was a smart way to explore the themes of human interconnectedness, how life is a web and not a simple line of existing or knowing, and of how our perspective can be captor to or an incomplete picture of a full story. I gave it 5 stars because it was pulled off really well.

My shortlist would have been:
1)Tiger and the cosmonaut
2) Wild Life
3) We, the Kindling
4) The Sideways life of Denny Voss
5) The Road Between us (Pick a colour would have been a close 6th)

Amanda wrote: "I have the exact same feelings as you Kristel.

Alrighty, let's start the longlist:

6) You've Changed by Ian Williams (former Gillar winner for his novel Reproduction



If you have a chance to see Fifteen Dogs as adapted for the stage by Marie Farsi (originally for Crow's Theatre in 2023) I HIGHLY recommend it. Bonus points for seeing a production with Tom Rooney. If it is ever mounted in Montreal, I hope you are feeling up to seeing it.

oh I didn't know about the stage Play, thanks for the rec Valerie!