The Booker Prize Longlist

The Booker Prize longlist was announced today - a list I always find more intriguing than the shortlist. Not because the longlist will include some daring choices that the judges would never dare promote to the shortlist - they often do make it. But because the longlist will include some old dragon of an author who gets press because of who s/he is, but really the book is boring and I wonder just how much the advance was and if it will pay out. It's usually Martin Amis, but this year it appears to be Ian McEwan. His is the only one of the heavyweight books I have read and was so, so disappointed. I haven't gotten around to reading the Coetzee and Rushdie yet....why is it that just because you have won the Booker before, you have to be nominated for every subsequent book you write? Can anyone tell me if they are really any good?

Two of my summer reading books are on the list, and apparently, I have invoked some envy due to my advance reading copy of On Beauty. Always interesting is the Guardian blog and its take on literary events.