The Lord of Chaos has swooped down from the tangled branches in his canopy of perplexity, in the dark teeming jungle, where monkeys laugh and screech and curl their tails, parrots repeat everything backwards, millions and billions of insects fly hither and thither and get in our faces and in our eyes and buzz louder and louder whenever we try to talk, and all our words come out sideways and ... Where was I? Oh Yes! Confusion reigns! The Not the Booker has entered its second week in typical and considerable style.

The rules, it seems, are there not so much to be broken as laughingly ignored. In fact, even as I type these words I have an uneasy feeling that most people who have come to this page have already skipped them and got straight down to the serious business of voting for their friend's book. The swine don't even know I'm casting pearls!

But, so it goes. I'm not complaining. The Not the Booker has always had a dual role as an investigation of social media, as well as literature. And if there's one truth about Twitter and Facebook it's that they encourage people to read the first two lines of everything and all of nothing.

What's more, in spite of the chaos, the log-rolling, the multiple nominations for books that only needed to be nominated once, the confusion over whether a book is a novel or collection of short stories, the multiple nominations for authors who died years ago, the nominations for US writers and for books published last year and the one person posting five nominations for books all published by the same company ... In spite of all that (and partly, in fact, because of all that) we have once again had a fantastic debate and produced a longlist full of undiscovered gems and future classics:

Here it is in alphabetical order and all its considerable glory:

Socrates Adams - Everything's Fine

Kitty Aldridge - A Trick I Learned from Dead Men

Louis Armand - Breakfast at Midnight

Ros Barber - The Marlowe Papers

Nicola Barker - The Yips

Ned Beauman - The Teleportation Accident

Liam Murray Bell - So It Is

Caroline Brothers - Hinterland

Peter Carey - The Chemistry of Tears

Adam Christopher - Empire State

Glen Duncan - Talulla Rising

Steve Ely - Ratmen

Stuart Evers - If This Is Home

Jenni Fagan - The Panopticon

Patrick Flanery - Absolution

Vanessa Gebbie - The Coward's Tale

Jonny Gibbings - Malice in Blunderland

Andrea Gillies - The White Lie

M John Harrison - Empty Space

Lander Hawes - Captivity

Peter Hobbs - In the Orchard, the Swallows

Kerry Hudson - Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma

JW Ironmonger - The Notable Brain of Maximilian Ponder

Lars Iyer - Dogma

Suzanne Joinson - A Lady Cyclist's Guide To Kashgar

Susanna Jones - When Nights Were Cold

Aj Kirby - Paint This Town Red

Margo Lanagan - The Brides of Rollrock Island

John Lanchester - Capital

Harriet Lane - Alys Always

Will Le Fleming - Central Reservation

Deborah Levy - Swimming Home

Nell Leyshon - The Colour of Milk

Karen Lord - Redemption In Indigo

Kenneth Macleod - The Incident

Hilary Mantel - Bring Up the Bodies

Paul Mason - Rare Earth

Simon Mawer - The Girl Who Fell from the Sky

Stephen May - Life! Death! Prizes!

Samantha Mills - The Quiddity of Will Self

Timothy Mo - Pure

Alan Monaghan - A Soldier's Farewell

Ewan Morrison - Tales from the Mall

Steve Mosby - Dark Room

Benjamin Myers - Pig Iron

Michael Palin - The Truth

Elliot Perlman - The Street Sweeper

Richard Pierce - Dead Men

Tom Pollock - The City's Son

Alex Preston - The Revelations

David Rain - The Heat of the Sun

Anna Raverat - Signs of Life

Dan Rhodes - This Is Life

Keith Ridgway - Hawthorn and Child

Gwendoline Riley - Opposed Positions

Adam Roberts - Jack Glass

Bethan Roberts - My Policeman

Fiona Robyn - The Most Beautiful Thing

Iain Rowan - One of Us]

Zadie Smith - NW

James Smythe - The Testimony

Simon Swift - The Casablanca Case

Graeme Talboys - Stealing Into Winter

Tarun Tejpal - The Story of My Assassins

Paul Torday - The Legacy of Hartlepool Hall

Adam Thorpe - Flight

Alan Warner - Dead Man's Pedal

Peter Wild - The Passenger

Will Wiles - The Care of Wooden Floors

Ada Wilson - Red Army Faction Blues

Jacqueline Winspear - Elegy For Eddie

Chris Womersley - Bereft

The job now is to turn that mighty column into a shortlist of six books. The six books that receive the most votes will proceed to the next round. Anyone and everyone can vote for one book. All you have to ensure is that you fulfil one qualifying criterion: in order to vote, you must write a review for the book you wish to vote for of 100 words or more. To prove you have written the review, you must link to it from the comment in which you vote.

Here's a quick step-by-step guide, in case you're confused:

Let's suppose I want to vote for the subject of this month's Reading Group, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by that youthful prodigy, Alan Garner.

First I go to the search page and enter "Garner Weirdstone" into the search field.

Second, I choose the relevant edition.

Third, I write a review of no fewer than 100 words in which I try to give a flavour of the book and of its plot and I to explain why I think the book is important and why others might like it. Then I hit submit.

Fourth, once it has appeared on the page I hit the "share" button that appears in the top right-hand corner of the box containing my review. When the link text appears in a little box , I "copy" it.

Fifth, I return to this Not the Booker prize page. I go to the comments box at the bottom. I type Vote: Alan Garner, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen into the comments field. After that I type something like: "Here is my review." I highlight that text with my mouse, and hit the button above the comment field that contains a picture of a chain – the link button. A prompt box appears saying "Enter a web address". I paste the copied text in. I then hit "post your comment".

Sixth, I make myself a nice cup of tea. I choose non-caffeinated, because I am a calm and I am zen. And then, I see yet another FOOL has nominated a different book and I HURL my tea across the room in rage. And now, we know we are in the exciting process of whittling down that longlist. If I like I can return to the comments with a barbed remark about whichever book it is that has annoyed me. Or perhaps, if I am a decent sort, I can instead write something celebrating the marvellous diversity of opinion and taste on display. After that, I can perhaps return to comment some more. But not vote. I can only do that once.

And that's it. Easy. You've got one week to do all that. The deadline is midnight 9 August. Which is to say, the middle of Thursday night ready for an announcement on Friday morning. Watch this space!

LATE BREAKING NEWS!!

Sorry to everyone who's been having trouble posting reviews on to the books pages. We're trying to resolves the technical problems, but to make things easier, if you write your review in this thread, we'll count it. Don't forget to start your post with the title of the book you are voting for. Thanks!

MORE BREAKING NEWS!!!

For reasons too horrible, chaotic and confusing to explain, the vote will now open for an extra 24hrs. Enjoy!

That means it's due to finish at 14:11 on Saturday 11 August.