Back in 2012, the Not the Booker prize almost fell of a cliff. The Lord Of Chaos, who has always stalked us, who has always longed to trip us up and laugh as we fall, he took his chance. He swooped down and did us over, cackled loud and pushed us right to the edge of the precipice. Our public voting system all but collapsed in a tide of acrimony and anger.
It wasn’t pretty. But actually a lot of good came out of it. Thanks to some excellent suggestions for improvements, we were able to continue stronger than ever before, and to maintain our open democratic ethos.
Chief among these improvements was the institution of a judging panel to provide some counterweight to the public vote - and to help ensure that there were people other than me reading most of the books on the shortlist. It’s worked superbly. We have had some wonderful judges in the past two years who have added a whole new layer of sagacity and intelligent debate to our proceedings. You can see for yourself by clicking through to these videos from 2013 and 2014 and watching them in action.
One of the most pleasing things is that this judging process is open to anyone. You don’t have to be in any way famous or any kind of mover and shaker in the book industry. You just have to have a few opinions about books and be prepared to express them on our forums. Our judges can come from anywhere. One of them, in fact, could be you.
If you want to take part, all you need to do is to pay heed to the relevant section of our enlightening, bedazzling and all-illuminating terms and conditions:
Three readers will be selected by the Guardian to form a panel of judges from those readers who have made substantial contributions to the discussion of the shortlisted books. The process by which these readers are chosen is left studiously vague and is at the Guardian’s discretion. These judges undertake to read at least three of the six-book shortlist before the final judging meeting.
In other words, join in with me when I read through the books, comment as much as you like and, if you enjoy the process, throw your name into the ring at the end when I canvas for volunteers.
Our hope is that we will again attract dedicated, eloquent readers with strong opinions and the ability to back up those opinions. The truth is, that we could really just invite any of our previous judges again since they all fitted the bill admirably. I’m hoping they’ll be reading along and that we may be able to call on them again - but we also want new blood. We want to be kept on our toes. So please join in. You will be more than welcome. In fact, you will even be rewarded, since this year, as a small token of thanks for all the value and wisdom our judges bring, we’ll be dishing out a small handful of books that have come in to Guardian towers to this year’s panel.
Elsewhere, talking of being kept on our toes, I here have to admit that in spite of all the excellence of our judges, and the increased general robustness of our proceedings, the Lord Of Chaos is among us and still - curse Him - chuckling like Dick Dastardly. To refer again to last week’s blog, you may have noticed a certain triumphant tone. I was rather chuffed at the way things had gone, the excellent selection of books on the shortlist and the huge number of votes that had put them there. I was also very pleased with myself for having managed to count them.
This hubris was all part of the script, of course. As students of Greek tragedy know, pride comes before a fall. And: oof, splat. Last week I laid the seeds of my own damnation. I noted that Stephen Grant’s publication date was coming up as September 2014. This was correct - but apparently due to some confusing metadata (two words which will be inextricably linked until the sun fizzles out). The book didn’t appear in the UK until November 2014 - as is in fact evidenced by an article published on, um, the Guardian in, ahem, November saying that the novel “is now being considered by British and European publishers for acquisition.”
Ah.
As a consequence, we’ve decided to resinstate Grant’s novel on our now slightly longer shortlist. We have a Not The Booker half dozen to choose from.
Looking on the bright side, this has injected some enjoyable early drama into the proceedings – having Stephen Grant on our list can only add to the interest. A Moment So Sublime is a campus novel that cuts so sharp it lost Grant his job at his college. No fun for the writer, perhaps, but it definitely makes the novel even more intriguing. I’m looking forward to seeing what it’s like.
Looking on the less bright side, I’m a fool, sorry. But let’s brush over that. Just to add to the complication, Stephen Grant’s book isn’t currently altogether easy to buy. But you can pick it up from the Guardian bookshop and we will get it delivered to you nice and quickly if you do. We will also hold off from reading this one until after all the other books on the list to make sure everyone has chance to get hold of a copy.
Our reading order will now be:
Shame, by Melanie Finn
The Artificial Anatomy of Parks, by Kat Gordon
Fishnet, by Kirstin Innes
Things We Have in Common, by Tasha Kavanagh
Dark Star, by Oliver Langmead
The Good Son, by Paul McVeigh
A Moment More Sublime, by Stephen Grant
If we read them all at the rate of one a week, we’ll be done and dusted by 28 September. I would say it’s going to be just fine. Fun, in fact. But let’s not tempt fate that much...
