I've read A Tale for the Time Being and enjoyed it very much. Loved the characters and an interesting premise and story.

I'm surprised TransAtlantic made the list. The reviews I read were mixed at best and a general agreement that it wasn't as good as Let the Great World Spin. Didn't put it on my TBR list for that reason.

I had the same trouble; then suddenly I was able to sign in and even stay signed in - something I haven't been able to do at either home or work for years. Still can't stay signed in at home.

My book club has The Testament of Mary on the docket so I may as well attack it now. I'll look up the others and see how many are released here in the U.S.

I'm afraid the only one I have even heard of is the Toibin. And I think Jim Crace is the only other author who's name is familiar. I'm obviously light-years away from what is on the list of the well-informed Guardian reader!

I always look forward to the Booker posts. I have a galley of The Lowland on my desk at work which I'm looking forward to reading. We Need New Names sounds unbearably grim so here's hoping someone else reads it and posts some feedback. As far as the rest of the list, I'm only familiar with Toibin and McCann, neither of whom I seem to like as much as many others do.

The Spinning Heart is quite interesting. It's about a village in Ireland and the events just after the financial collapse a few years ago. What's interesting is that it's twenty-one different stories by twenty-one different people, but there is a continuous thread. It nearly worked - but not quite. I thought it would have been better to have chosen, say, four or five people and told the story through their eyes. As it is, it feels like a bit of a gimmick, and I don't feel the story is complete. I don't think it'll be short-listed.

I read the first three chapters of the first book of The Kills and abandoned it. How that ordinary, badly written thriller got long-listed, I do not know. How can you even consider a book which has this ungrammatical rubbish? Ford waited, first he leaned against the table, then he stood upright with his arms folded.

But now - A Tale for the Time Being. I'm with you, Merryworld - I really enjoyed it. I'll be astonished if it isn't shortlisted - I think it's got a chance of winning. It's a story about a fifteen year old Japanese girl, who is writing a diary - and a woman in Canada who is reading the diary. There are some unpleasant scenes, but altogether it worked. I agree - I loved all the characters and really cared about them and what happened to them. Lovely book - thoroughly recommended.

One other piece of news - all the books on the longlist that are not yet published have had their publication date brought forward. (At least here in the UK, that is...)

Posting this from Munich, in Germany, on holiday. Lovely city.

Transatlantic - I enjoyed it. It might get shortlisted. I don't think it'll win, though. It's several interconnecting stories about people either travelling to America from Ireland or vice versa. Some of the people are real (eg Alcock and Brown); some are not. I liked it a lot.

Almost English I abandoned - it didn't suit me, but I may go back to it - a sixteen year old girl and her relationship with her Hungarian relatives.

Now reading The Marrying of Chani Kaufman.

The Marrying of Chani Kaufman. I thought I wasn't going to enjoy this one at all. But as I read more and more, I really started to enjoy it. It follows the intertwined stories of two or three families in Golders Green (if you don't know, that's a predominantly Jewish area of London). It's set in recent years, and also in 1982 when two of the main protagonist met as young prople in Jerusalem. I enjoyed it, as I say - but I felt that the story had been told before; it wasn't so far away from the The Chosen by Chaim Potok which we all read a fair years ago - that is, too much of the story was about being Jewish, and not enough about the actual people, I know that being Jewish is a big part of the people - but it shouldn't be the whole story.

A good book though - I've strongly recommended it to my wife! (Girl book?) I doubt if it'll be shortlisted.

Five Star Billionaire is the story of four or five people from various walks of life trying to get by (or better themselves) in modern Asia - mainly Shanghai. It's told as interconnecting short chapters with titles like Move to Where the Money is or Always Rebound after Each Failure - sort of self-help platitudes. (Interestingly, there is a book written this year called How to get filthy rich in rising Asia by Mohsin Hahmid - he was shortlisted a few years ago for The Fundamentalist - which is a whole mockery of the self-help idea - it's meant to be pretty good. A bit of a coincidence.)

Anyway, I enjoyed the book a lot; the stories of the people were interesting, and I found that I cared about the characters even with their failings. Will it be shortlisted? Possibly. Will it win? I doubt it.

Just spent two days in Nurnberg, and it's an absolutely lovely little town. Off to Salzburg in Austria on Tuesday.

Oh, yes. Ahem. Sorry. I'm meant to be reviewing books here.

Harvest by Jim Crace. It's set in an unnamed village somewhere in Great Britain, sometime in the fairly remote past. On the last day of the harvest, a few events occur which seem to be the trigger for some significant changes. The book is first person; I really found it fascinating. It took me two attempts to get into in (even though it's short) but I think it will repay re-reading. I think it's a cert for the shortlist. It might even win.

Sounds like a great trip, Martin. I think Austria is gorgeous.

Back from holiday :(

I did have an excellent time, though. They say a change is as good as a rest - I hope that's true, because it was not a rest by any means! But we all enjoyed ourselves. And my wife has bought herself a dirndl and looks lovely in it.

Unexploded. Quite a good book - set in Brighton in 1940/41. Unfortunately, it's one of those books where, frankly, no-one is particularly nice. They are all nice middle-class people with revolting (but probably fairly typical) anti-Semitic views, who don't really like Hitler, but think that nice Mr Mosely had the right idea.... It's very difficult to enjoy a book, where you don't actually sympathise with any of the characters.

Can't see this being short-listed.

I've linked to a good article by Philip Hensher in the Spectator about the longlist. He doesn't entirely agree with me...but as he was a Booker judge in 2001 and was shortlisted in 2008, I think his credentials are better than mine.

Here is a link that might be useful: Philip Henscher - Booker Longlist review

She needed a full skirt to disguise what happened after all those luscious Austrian desserts with whipped cream?

Thanks for keeping us updated on the list. I trust your reviews more than the people who think they know best.

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton is a long meaty book. It's set in New Zealand during a gold rush in the mid 1800s. It's written in a style of a book of the time (complete with people saying "D--m me!"). It tells the interlocking stories of about fifteen men and two women, and I found it fascinating - though the last few chapters were a little strange. I won't explain - it's a bit of a spoiler - but it slightly spoiled the book for me.

But I enjoyed it. It won't win, but I it might be shortlisted.

We Need New Names is a story about some kids in Zimbabwe. I know there is more to it, but I found it very hard to get into, so I abandoned it.

The Lowland has only just been released - if it's shortlisted, I'll read it.

So, my shortlist prediction is:-

Five Star Billionaire - Tash Aw (Fourth Estate)
The Luminaries - Eleanor Catton (Granta)
Harvest - Jim Crace (Picador)
TransAtlantic - Colum McCann (Bloomsbury)
A Tale for the Time Being - Ruth Ozeki (Canongate)
The Testament of Mary - Colm Toibin (Viking)

I'd love to see The Marrying of Chani Kaufman shortlisted, but I don't think it will be. And of course, I haven't read The Lowland, which might be magnificent, for all I know.

I hope A Tale for the Time Being wins, as I have a tenner on it at 18-1. I expect Harvest to win.

But it's a pretty good longlist this year.

I tried re-reading the first book of The Kills. It's all right, I suppose. I don't really understand why everyone is raving about it. I'm about half-way through...and the short-list has been announced - and the one book I haven't read is on it, so I have to get that. So The Kills can go hang.

New thread started for the shortlist. Thanks for your attention!