Where to Start With the Booker Prize 2026 Shortlist
Six books, seven weeks until the winner, and one of them runs to six hundred pages. Which of the shortlisted novels to open first, which to save for a group, and which one I think wins.
Where to Start With the Booker Prize 2026 Longlist
Thirteen novels, one shortlist in September, and not enough evenings. Here is what each book on the Booker 2026 longlist actually is, and which one I would open first.
What to Read Before Nolan’s Odyssey
You have a ticket and not much time. Here is what I would actually read before Nolan's Odyssey, sorted by how many free evenings you have between now and the cinema.
Book CLB
Each story in our ever growing library can be accessed through our membership program. Subscribe and receive instantaneous and unlimited access!
Top 5 This Week
America and Americans by John Steinbeck: A Book Club Review
His final book asks what Americans are, and answers that they are a people assembled out of mutual hostility who then invented a dream about home. A group will argue about one chapter all evening, and should.
America and Americans by John Steinbeck: A Book Club Review
His final book asks what Americans are, and answers that they are a people assembled out of mutual hostility who then invented a dream about home. A group will argue about one chapter all evening, and should.
Once There Was a War by John Steinbeck
A famous novelist spends 1943 filing war dispatches, then publishes them fifteen years later with a preface itemising the rules he worked under and the stories he agreed to suppress. The book and its own retraction, bound together.
A Russian Journal by John Steinbeck
Two Americans spent forty days in Stalin's Soviet Union in 1947 having promised each other they would explain nothing. Whether that promise was honesty or cowardice is the argument, and it was being had in 1948 too.
The Long Valley by John Steinbeck
Thirteen pieces of Salinas Valley fiction, of which four are superb, two are indefensible and one is three pages long and better than most novels. A collection nobody should assign whole, and a guide to which parts to assign instead.
The Wayward Bus by John Steinbeck
A woman boards a rural bus and gives the other passengers a false name she has just assembled from a cigarette poster and a tree outside the window. She is the most honest person on board, and the novel knows it.
Cup of Gold by John Steinbeck
An old man on a Welsh hilltop tells a boy that the people who never grow up get everything they want and find it worth nothing. The boy sails, becomes the most feared pirate in the Caribbean, and proves him right over two hundred pages.
The Pastures of Heaven by John Steinbeck
A family moves into a valley and is pleasant to everyone. Within a few years most of their neighbours are dead, institutionalised or gone. Nobody notices, including them, and that is the whole design.
Don't Miss
Celebrities
Once There Was a War by John Steinbeck
Bookclb -
A famous novelist spends 1943 filing war dispatches, then publishes them fifteen years later with a preface itemising the rules he worked under and the stories he agreed to suppress. The book and its own retraction, bound together.
Drama
Scandals
Latest Posts
Technology
Health
America and Americans by John Steinbeck: A Book Club Review
His final book asks what Americans are, and answers that they are a people assembled out of mutual hostility who then invented a dream about home. A group will argue about one chapter all evening, and should.
Once There Was a War by John Steinbeck
A famous novelist spends 1943 filing war dispatches, then publishes them fifteen years later with a preface itemising the rules he worked under and the stories he agreed to suppress. The book and its own retraction, bound together.
A Russian Journal by John Steinbeck
Two Americans spent forty days in Stalin's Soviet Union in 1947 having promised each other they would explain nothing. Whether that promise was honesty or cowardice is the argument, and it was being had in 1948 too.
The Long Valley by John Steinbeck
Thirteen pieces of Salinas Valley fiction, of which four are superb, two are indefensible and one is three pages long and better than most novels. A collection nobody should assign whole, and a guide to which parts to assign instead.
The Wayward Bus by John Steinbeck
A woman boards a rural bus and gives the other passengers a false name she has just assembled from a cigarette poster and a tree outside the window. She is the most honest person on board, and the novel knows it.
