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.
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Top 5 This Week
In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck: A Book Club Review
The organiser delivers a baby to win the camp's trust, welcomes a death because the funeral will be useful, and ends the novel propping a friend's corpse on a platform to make a speech. A group will argue for two hours about whether he is right.
In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck: A Book Club Review
The organiser delivers a baby to win the camp's trust, welcomes a death because the funeral will be useful, and ends the novel propping a friend's corpse on a platform to make a speech. A group will argue for two hours about whether he is right.
Reap & Sow by Charlotte B. Plumb
High on a beam above a playhouse crowd, a hunted young woman watches a comedy about a fake courtship while the demon beside her watches only her. Plumb's gothic romance is about what happens when a bargain stops feeling like one.
Hallowed Bones by Lucy Smoke
A crow throws itself at a dormitory window until a frightened girl lets it in. Lucy Smoke's Salem novel is full of creatures asking Haven Wardwell to open doors she would rather keep shut, and it is at its best when the asking turns into horror.
Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck
A simple-minded man sits in a jail cell asking a fortune teller a hypothetical question about a friend in trouble, and receives an answer that sends him out that night with a baseball bat. The best scene in the book, and the one worth an evening.
The Moon Is Down by John Steinbeck
In Fascist Italy, owning a copy carried the death penalty. It was printed in secret in Sweden and smuggled into Norway, and the King decorated Steinbeck after the war. Meanwhile American critics were calling it an apology for the enemy.
It Ends Here by Heidi Perks
A wife replays the doorbell footage of her husband leaving the house, searching his pixelated face for a clue. Heidi Perks's siege novel is less interested in the café where the gun is than in the families on the far side of the police tape, each discovering a morning they knew nothing about.
The Red Pony by John Steinbeck: A Book Club Review
Schools hand this to twelve-year-olds. It contains a pony dying slowly, a horse killed with a hammer, and an old man told that his life's one story bores everybody. A group reading it as adults will find something other than a boyhood idyll.
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Reap & Sow by Charlotte B. Plumb
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High on a beam above a playhouse crowd, a hunted young woman watches a comedy about a fake courtship while the demon beside her watches only her. Plumb's gothic romance is about what happens when a bargain stops feeling like one.
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In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck: A Book Club Review
The organiser delivers a baby to win the camp's trust, welcomes a death because the funeral will be useful, and ends the novel propping a friend's corpse on a platform to make a speech. A group will argue for two hours about whether he is right.
Reap & Sow by Charlotte B. Plumb
High on a beam above a playhouse crowd, a hunted young woman watches a comedy about a fake courtship while the demon beside her watches only her. Plumb's gothic romance is about what happens when a bargain stops feeling like one.
Hallowed Bones by Lucy Smoke
A crow throws itself at a dormitory window until a frightened girl lets it in. Lucy Smoke's Salem novel is full of creatures asking Haven Wardwell to open doors she would rather keep shut, and it is at its best when the asking turns into horror.
Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck
A simple-minded man sits in a jail cell asking a fortune teller a hypothetical question about a friend in trouble, and receives an answer that sends him out that night with a baseball bat. The best scene in the book, and the one worth an evening.
The Moon Is Down by John Steinbeck
In Fascist Italy, owning a copy carried the death penalty. It was printed in secret in Sweden and smuggled into Norway, and the King decorated Steinbeck after the war. Meanwhile American critics were calling it an apology for the enemy.
