Ah well,another year, another Booker and another quite ordinary book wins.I seem to remember saying a couple of weeks ago how unremarkable Arvind Adiga's White Tiger was.Perfect for the Booker prize and I am now bored with the subject.
The next most exciting thing happening is the credit crunch.I agree with most people that there should be a serious rolling of heads among those who have endangered global economies.As for public sector bodies who have lost our money, listen carefully -- investing only where the returns are the highest is a stupid and greedy policy, as the BCCI debacle demonstrated so conclusively.But the canker is at the core of the money trade with its artificial and unsustainable operations,which bear no relation to the realities of our economy in the UK.Enough for today.Await more rants next week

My last post was abruptly terminated in mid-sentence by my pc suddenly crashing while I was still deep in a grumble about the Booker shortlist. Salman Rushdie 's Enchantress of Florence did not make it from the longlist to the shortlist but is easily the best work of the whole lot It is profound yet entertaining and has more philosophic content in two pages taken at random than the whole of any of the listed novels.Rushdie should not bother with pedestrian literary prizes like the Booker -- he is now Nobel material.
Nonetheless I love the whole Booker flurry and wouldn't want to see its demise, but it has become a circus for lightweights and cannot be taken seriously any longer.Okay, I'll concede the rare exception as in 2004 with Alan Hollinghurst's haunting Line of Beauty.
In any case whatever the title that wins, the publisher can be assured of huge sales worldwide which itself is a bit of a turn-off.I do loathe being one of a mindless herd

It is nearly two years since I posted my last blog -- and I have been inspired to resume posting by the discovery that I have a fan club for my blogsite and am no longer whistling in the wind ,so to speak. What a surprise!
So now I am determined to post a blog at least once a week, and this is the first in the new series.
It's Booker time again and I have read most of the shortlist.Last year's winner was so dreary that I forgot the title and author as soon as I'd finished the book. Nice one, judges.It was easily the worst ever, even more boring than The Sea(Banville) and Amsterdam by Ian Thingy. This year I have liked Tiger by Arvind Adiga but it is too much of a lightweight to be a serious contender for 2008 --and will therefore probably be the choice of the judges.Sebastian Barry's Secret Scripture is well written,even poetic in parts