With co-author DeNel Rehberg Sedo of Mount Saint Vincent University, her latest book - Reading Bestsellers: Recommendation Culture and the Multimodal Reader - examines readers’ opinions about fiction and how they contribute to the creation of bestsellers.
One of Fuller’s areas of expertise is contemporary cultures of reading. “They still loom large in the lives of many readers, and in our research.” When looking for your next novel, “don't forget to ask people you know or work with for recommendations,” says Danielle Fuller of the Department of English and Film Studies. According to a University of Alberta researcher, when a book endorsement comes from a friend, family member or colleague, it carries the power of persuasion. Standing strong in the digital deluge, however, the most trusted book recommendations, especially for fiction, are decidedly old school. The literary ecosystem produces a relentless stream of consumer reviews, influencer blogs and online recommendation sites in addition to conventional media commentary. The other judges are Rachel Cooke and Deborah Levy.Īll eight books are now in contention for the £40,000 prize to be awarded in central London on 23 March.Readers today have more information than ever to guide their book choices. The shortlist will be particularly pleasing for the publishers Faber and Granta, both of which have three writers represented.įiennes said it was a diverse list, but not deliberately so, chosen after seven hours of judging sessions that included the writers AM Homes and Mohsin Hamid skyping from New York and Lahore respectively. As did Will Self, who last year sparked debate about the state of the novel when he gave a lecture in which he lamented that difficult literary fiction was an art form dying before our eyes. Unusually, the Folio prize has decided to be transparent and name all the books it considers, which means we know that big names such as Martin Amis, Sarah Waters, Peter Carey and Booker-winner Richard Flanagan all failed to make the shortlist. “These books are a delight to read but they are really intellectually engaging and challenging.”
They were “intellectually heavyweight books without being heavy”, he added. “There’s dazzle and wildness and experiment hand in hand with a deep core commitment to human struggles and fervours and longings.” These books all say something true about human experience in a way that feels like something new,” he said. “It is easy to say something new, it is easy to say something true. The novels all have universal themes, he said, exploring big subjects such as war, grief, family life, love and the mystery of art. The judges read 80 books over five months and Fiennes admitted expecting to find themes of content – war in the Middle East, perhaps, or the aftermath of the financial crash – but instead he found trends in form, with novels seeking “new ways of telling stories”. These books all say something true about human experience in a way that feels like something new William Fiennes It will compete with Tóibín’s Nora Webster, set in 1960s Ireland Ben Lerner’s 10:04 Miriam Toews’ All My Puny Sorrows Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor’s debut novel Dust Akhil Sharma’s Family Life Rachel Cusk’s Outline and Jenny Offill’s Dept. It was runner-up in the Booker prize and won the Costa novel award and the Goldsmiths prize.
#FOLIO BOOKS LAHORE HOW TO#
The Folio prize aims to recognise the best English-language fiction – regardless of form, genre and geography, and was won in its first year by the American short-story writer George Saunders.Īll eight books this year can safely be described as novels, with Smith’s How to Be Both becoming a book award regular. The prize was created as a reaction to perceived weaknesses of the Man Booker prize and gathered steam in the aftermath of the much-criticised shortlist of 2011, which contained six books that all, as one judge said, “zipped along”.
Five women and three men from the UK, Ireland, US, Canada, Kenya and India were named on the shortlist of a literary prize now in its second year.
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