new reading list

So it looks like there isn't a cheap way to buy this year's Booker Prize shortlist; even the almighty buying power of Book People hasn't been able to get the books down below fifteen quid each for the most expensive ones, which is too much.

This is a pity, because I was all geared up for a burst of modern-fiction-reading. So here's what I'm doing instead: I've found on my shelves six novels which have at some point in the past been shortlisted for the Booker, and I'm going to read them instead.

They are, in chronological order:

• Small World by David Lodge (1984)
• Amsterdam by Ian McEwan (1998)
• English Passengers by Matthew Kneale (2000)
• The Sea by John Banville (2005)
• Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh (2008)
• Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey (2010)

My chosen pseudo-random reading order is alphabetical by surname: Banville, Carey, Ghosh, Kneale, Lodge, McEwan. This puts the two which we already know won at either end of the list, pleasingly.