Hello, I’ve become slightly obsessed with the women’s prize. I read all of the winners first, and I’m now reading my way through all of the shortlists. I’m 110 in so far of the current 168. I would agree with lots of your choices, especially Demon copperhead and Life after Life. If you haven’t yet read Half of a yellow Sun I’d really recommend it, it’s fabulous. Also The Siege and the Sentence.
Wow, I am in awe of your 110 read! Beyond these I read all of last years 16 and I think around 20ish books from before that, maybe less. Glad we agree on Life After Life and Demon. I enjoyed The Sentence, especially the bookshop parts, although it wasn’t a favourite. Thanks for the recommendations. 😊📚
Kate Grenville won in 1999 with "The Idea of Perfection", which is so much more appropriate for the prize than this year's Dolly Maunder. I highly recommend her 1999 winner which was the first truly 'literary' book I ever read and I remember it with great fondness.
Excellent! I think it’s hard not to remember milestone books in our reading lives with fondness. I’ll have to try Kate Greenville’s winner as well as her entry this year. 😊📚
What a fun idea for a video! Careless is on my shelf and I just bought The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet - hope to get to them soon! Life After Life is one of my favourite books of all time as well - I love giving it as a gift because I genuinely think it has a very wide appeal. 🦊
Thanks, Alice!🌷My personal WP list would definitely include Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie, next to Hamnet also The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell, The Book of Form and Happiness by Ruth Ozeki, Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris. Are you going to read also this year’s longlist? I usually read three or four books. Right now I’m considering Restless Dolly Maunder, River East River West and Blue Beautiful Planet, but it may become a totally different selection once I’ve watched some reviews😅
I still really need to get to Home Fire, I was recommended that one a lot last year. All the other books you name I enjoyed although they weren’t top favourites. I’m still a bit undecided on the longlist this year which is good in a way. I have reserved most of the books from the library or on audio but I won’t be going all out to read every single book like I did last year. A few of them don’t really appeal, but I can always try them to see what I think. Blue Beautiful Planet, The Wren The Wren, The Maiden and Soldier Sailor would be the ones I’m most interested for at the moment. 😊📚
2022 was such a good year! Loved this video and hearing all your favourites, I share lots of them. I think Life after life is still one of my top books of all time. Trying to blot out memories of the dire tv series! Great video,happy reading memories.
It was such a good year! Great Circle has definitely become an long time favourite and Sorrow and Bliss has potential to be as well. Life After Life is definitely one of my top favourites, maybe even my all time favourite. I still think about it often. 😊📚
That’s quite a fair few you’ve read. I’m betting you’ve not read Anita and Me, The Weight of Water, The Little Friend, and The Silence of the Girls, can’t think what the 5th one would be, maybe The Lovely Bones? Do it!!! I want to hear your fav 16 so much now. 😊📚
Have read most of the early ones and weirdly I was just looking at The Lovely Bones yesterday and thinking it would be a great one to re-read. The Time Traveller’s Wife is one of the best time travel books ever and as someone who never read romances when I was younger, I thought of as my favourite romance book for some time! I still haven’t read Demon or finished Great Circle - I must do both! ❤
I had no idea A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet was ever longlasting!!! 😃 love that book and whooo hooray for sci-fi! Also did not know Life after Life was listed! I am really excited to read it, was on my March TBR but nkt yet it's time. This was really fun 🌱🌍 (emoji for Life after Life) I have read more than I thought over the years my Faves are Queenie, Girl Woman Other, The Vanishing Half and now i know it was listed alwtaSAP. I really want to read Piraneci going to check out your other video now 😃💜📚
Yes, I was really surprised but really happy to see it there on the list of past longlists! Life After Life is probably my ultimate favourite from the prize (don’t tell Demon). I must try to get to Piranesi this month and after prize season madness is over I’d like to try some more of the winners from the past. 😊📚
@AliceandtheGiantBookshelf 😆😆😆 your secret is safe - look forward to hearing your thoughts on Piranesi! Really need to read the rest of the Wayfarers. Loved her Monk and Robot dulogy 💜📚
@@ChattieTheMadChatter I am desperate to read the Monk and Robot duology. Lately I have been looking for them whenever I am in a bookshop but I never see them! 🤖 🙃 Also excited for the rest of Wayfarers. 😊📚
I've been looking forward to hearing your list! I think we have two in common - Life After Life and Sorrow And Bliss. Careless nearly made my list as well. It's really interesting looking back at the long listed books because there are lots that I hadn't realised were listed, such as Gone Girl. I knew Demon and Life After Life would be up there for you 😊📚
I’m glad we are firmly agreed on Life After Life. I think it’s one of my favourite books ever. Thanks for prompting me to make this list, I loved revisiting all the ones I’d read and whittling it down. Came close to including The End of Mr Y, Case Histories and I think there was one more that is now escaping my mind. I really enjoyed Gone Girl but it’s one of those that I was really surprised had been listed. Some books just feel like such examples of their genre that I am then surprised they got selected. But then again we nearly always get a couple of surprises that seem to fall into a genre other than literary fiction. 😊📚
I love Becky Chambers! The only other one from your list that I've read is Demon. Yesterday, I picked up a copy of Goldfinch for 50c at a library sale. Have you read it? It's a chunker and doesn't sound very good from the blurbs... I own Life After Life and Hamnet. Need to move them up on my TBR, especially since this year's WP is meh. ⭕️ 🙂 Thank you for the visit!!
The Goldfinch is the one Donna Tartt I haven’t picked up but I am looking to get it secondhand. Most people seem to think it’s one of her best, I’ve always just been put off by the size. She’s usually very good though. I think it’s about art, and I believe there’s a connection to a book on the nonfic longlist: Thunderclap. I know you don’t love sad books generally and both Life After Life and Hamnet are very sad, but I highly recommend both. Life After Life is such an interesting book. Did you say you’d started a WP book? I feel like I’m behind already. 😊📚
@AliceandtheGiantBookshelf I wasn't planning on reading any of the WP until there are more reviews, but libby had the 8 lives one, so I got it. The first 4 of the lives are filled with torture, humiliation and violence. I guess this is something we need to know about but I can't imagine anyone enjoying the book! It is well written however. To me, the subject of a book is much more important than the "beautiful prose".
Hamnet and Demon would both be on mine too. Poisonwood Bible (shortlisted 1999) by Kingsolver would also be on my top 16. The Women's Prize first came to my notice in 2007 and I've read quite a few longlisted books since then. Still have quite a few to go. Madeline Miller's two Circe and The Song of Achilles would be on my list. Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie (still haven't read Home Fires). Wolf Hall (trilogy) Old Filth by Jane Gardam Oryx and Crake by Atwood Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living by Carrie Tiffany Small Island by Andrea Levy The Island of the Missing Trees by Elif Shafak The Bandit Queens Milkman by Anna Burns Girl, Woman, Other and the list could go on and on 🙂
That’s a great list of favourites, you’ve read many more than me. I liked Song of Achilles so I need to get to Circe. I also need to finish the Wolf Hall trilogy and try Oryx and Crake because I’ve been meaning to for years now. 😊📚
What a fantastic list.... I would bet your # 3... Sorrow and Bliss. Tied for # 2 would be Great Circle and Life After Life... # 1being Demon Copperhead (though at any time I think you may vote Life After Life as number 1) You'll have to let us know if you end up doing your own Women's Prize winner
This was especially interesting to me, because, as you know, I am not always the biggest fan of the books on the Women's Prize lists. So I was curious what books I have read and it turned out to be Lovely Bones, which I also really liked and The Time Traveller's Wife, which I liked back in the day, but it was such a long time ago, that I can't judge if that would still be the case today. The Silence of the Girls I also enjoyed and I liked it a lot more than The Song of Achilles. Also enjoyed Hamnet. I wasn't the biggest fan of Station Eleven and a bit meh about Sorrow and Bliss and dnf'd Small Angry Planet and My Little Friend (which should have been right up my alley, but was far too meandering for its own good in my humble opinion). So quite a mixed bag, but not as bad as I expected. 😂
I was also pleasantly surprised when I looked back into the lists and found some books I had really loved in the past. There’s a lot on there, so there might even be more you have loved. I also liked The Silence of the Girls a lot more than Song of Achilles. I think The Little Friend is a strange one, I’d like to go back and read it again to see how I feel about it now. I’ll probably try The Goldfinch first though as I’ve never read that one. 😊📚
I really enjoyed reading the shortlist in 2022, it was a strong shortlist. That was the first year I was really interested in reading the prize, but I only read 7 in total (including a DNF within the shortlisted books). Thanks for the recommendation. 😊📚
It does make you realise that the sci-fi genre hasn’t been completely excluded over the years! I was still quite surprised to see that one on the list though. 😊📚
So many favourites of mine on your longlist. Mantel, Atkinson and O'Farrell are stellar writers. And it was great to be reminded of Anita and Me.
Indeed, three wonderful writers. I must get to more of Mantel. I am very fond of Anita and Me. 😊📚
Hello, I’ve become slightly obsessed with the women’s prize. I read all of the winners first, and I’m now reading my way through all of the shortlists. I’m 110 in so far of the current 168. I would agree with lots of your choices, especially Demon copperhead and Life after Life. If you haven’t yet read Half of a yellow Sun I’d really recommend it, it’s fabulous. Also The Siege and the Sentence.
Wow, I am in awe of your 110 read! Beyond these I read all of last years 16 and I think around 20ish books from before that, maybe less. Glad we agree on Life After Life and Demon. I enjoyed The Sentence, especially the bookshop parts, although it wasn’t a favourite. Thanks for the recommendations. 😊📚
Oh so many great reads here! Great Circle& Hamnet have such a special place in my heart💜💙
Me too. Excellent books! 💛
Hamnet , GC & Life After Life are my ultimate faves too and I obviously adored Careless. I need to do this ❤ ✈️❤ Loved seeing your list ❤️
Those are three great ultimate faves! Would love to see your full list! 😊📚💛
Kate Grenville won in 1999 with "The Idea of Perfection", which is so much more appropriate for the prize than this year's Dolly Maunder. I highly recommend her 1999 winner which was the first truly 'literary' book I ever read and I remember it with great fondness.
Excellent! I think it’s hard not to remember milestone books in our reading lives with fondness. I’ll have to try Kate Greenville’s winner as well as her entry this year. 😊📚
What a fun idea for a video! Careless is on my shelf and I just bought The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet - hope to get to them soon! Life After Life is one of my favourite books of all time as well - I love giving it as a gift because I genuinely think it has a very wide appeal. 🦊
Life After Life is a great book to gift! I love it so much. You have some great books on your shelf and waiting for you. 😊📚
Thanks, Alice!🌷My personal WP list would definitely include Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie, next to Hamnet also The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell, The Book of Form and Happiness by Ruth Ozeki, Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris. Are you going to read also this year’s longlist? I usually read three or four books. Right now I’m considering Restless Dolly Maunder, River East River West and Blue Beautiful Planet, but it may become a totally different selection once I’ve watched some reviews😅
I still really need to get to Home Fire, I was recommended that one a lot last year. All the other books you name I enjoyed although they weren’t top favourites. I’m still a bit undecided on the longlist this year which is good in a way. I have reserved most of the books from the library or on audio but I won’t be going all out to read every single book like I did last year. A few of them don’t really appeal, but I can always try them to see what I think. Blue Beautiful Planet, The Wren The Wren, The Maiden and Soldier Sailor would be the ones I’m most interested for at the moment. 😊📚
2022 was such a good year! Loved this video and hearing all your favourites, I share lots of them. I think Life after life is still one of my top books of all time. Trying to blot out memories of the dire tv series! Great video,happy reading memories.
It was such a good year! Great Circle has definitely become an long time favourite and Sorrow and Bliss has potential to be as well. Life After Life is definitely one of my top favourites, maybe even my all time favourite. I still think about it often. 😊📚
We have quite a few of these in common 😂😂 Love great circle, hamnet and obviously careless 💜💜
Yay! Love all these books so much, but those three are particularly awesome! 💛
My favourite from your list is Great Circle. It was my number one book of 2022.
Such a great book! I love that one. 😊📚
Well I have read 11/16 from your longlist and all of your shortlist 🤩
2022 was a brilliant year for great books! I need to do this!!
That’s quite a fair few you’ve read. I’m betting you’ve not read Anita and Me, The Weight of Water, The Little Friend, and The Silence of the Girls, can’t think what the 5th one would be, maybe The Lovely Bones?
Do it!!! I want to hear your fav 16 so much now. 😊📚
Have read most of the early ones and weirdly I was just looking at The Lovely Bones yesterday and thinking it would be a great one to re-read. The Time Traveller’s Wife is one of the best time travel books ever and as someone who never read romances when I was younger, I thought of as my favourite romance book for some time! I still haven’t read Demon or finished Great Circle - I must do both! ❤
You must! Lovely Bones and Time Travellers Wife are both books I am incredibly fond of and probably still in my all time top 10. 💛
I had no idea A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet was ever longlasting!!! 😃 love that book and whooo hooray for sci-fi!
Also did not know Life after Life was listed!
I am really excited to read it, was on my March TBR but nkt yet it's time. This was really fun 🌱🌍 (emoji for Life after Life)
I have read more than I thought over the years my Faves are
Queenie, Girl Woman Other, The Vanishing Half and now i know it was listed alwtaSAP. I really want to read Piraneci going to check out your other video now 😃💜📚
Yes, I was really surprised but really happy to see it there on the list of past longlists! Life After Life is probably my ultimate favourite from the prize (don’t tell Demon). I must try to get to Piranesi this month and after prize season madness is over I’d like to try some more of the winners from the past. 😊📚
@AliceandtheGiantBookshelf 😆😆😆 your secret is safe - look forward to hearing your thoughts on Piranesi! Really need to read the rest of the Wayfarers. Loved her Monk and Robot dulogy 💜📚
@@ChattieTheMadChatter I am desperate to read the Monk and Robot duology. Lately I have been looking for them whenever I am in a bookshop but I never see them! 🤖 🙃 Also excited for the rest of Wayfarers. 😊📚
@@AliceandtheGiantBookshelf I got them out the library but they are on my list to own! Good luck in your search! 💜📚
I've been looking forward to hearing your list! I think we have two in common - Life After Life and Sorrow And Bliss. Careless nearly made my list as well. It's really interesting looking back at the long listed books because there are lots that I hadn't realised were listed, such as Gone Girl. I knew Demon and Life After Life would be up there for you 😊📚
I’m glad we are firmly agreed on Life After Life. I think it’s one of my favourite books ever. Thanks for prompting me to make this list, I loved revisiting all the ones I’d read and whittling it down. Came close to including The End of Mr Y, Case Histories and I think there was one more that is now escaping my mind. I really enjoyed Gone Girl but it’s one of those that I was really surprised had been listed. Some books just feel like such examples of their genre that I am then surprised they got selected. But then again we nearly always get a couple of surprises that seem to fall into a genre other than literary fiction. 😊📚
@@AliceandtheGiantBookshelf one thing I like about this year's list is there seem to be a few which are more genre-leaning
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Thanks Victoria. 💛
I love Becky Chambers! The only other one from your list that I've read is Demon. Yesterday, I picked up a copy of Goldfinch for 50c at a library sale. Have you read it? It's a chunker and doesn't sound very good from the blurbs... I own Life After Life and Hamnet. Need to move them up on my TBR, especially since this year's WP is meh. ⭕️ 🙂 Thank you for the visit!!
The Goldfinch is the one Donna Tartt I haven’t picked up but I am looking to get it secondhand. Most people seem to think it’s one of her best, I’ve always just been put off by the size. She’s usually very good though. I think it’s about art, and I believe there’s a connection to a book on the nonfic longlist: Thunderclap.
I know you don’t love sad books generally and both Life After Life and Hamnet are very sad, but I highly recommend both. Life After Life is such an interesting book.
Did you say you’d started a WP book? I feel like I’m behind already. 😊📚
@AliceandtheGiantBookshelf I wasn't planning on reading any of the WP until there are more reviews, but libby had the 8 lives one, so I got it. The first 4 of the lives are filled with torture, humiliation and violence. I guess this is something we need to know about but I can't imagine anyone enjoying the book! It is well written however. To me, the subject of a book is much more important than the "beautiful prose".
Hamnet and Demon would both be on mine too. Poisonwood Bible (shortlisted 1999) by Kingsolver would also be on my top 16. The Women's Prize first came to my notice in 2007 and I've read quite a few longlisted books since then. Still have quite a few to go.
Madeline Miller's two Circe and The Song of Achilles would be on my list.
Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie (still haven't read Home Fires).
Wolf Hall (trilogy)
Old Filth by Jane Gardam
Oryx and Crake by Atwood
Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living by Carrie Tiffany
Small Island by Andrea Levy
The Island of the Missing Trees by Elif Shafak
The Bandit Queens
Milkman by Anna Burns
Girl, Woman, Other
and the list could go on and on 🙂
That’s a great list of favourites, you’ve read many more than me. I liked Song of Achilles so I need to get to Circe. I also need to finish the Wolf Hall trilogy and try Oryx and Crake because I’ve been meaning to for years now. 😊📚
What a fantastic list.... I would bet your # 3... Sorrow and Bliss. Tied for # 2 would be Great Circle and Life After Life... # 1being Demon Copperhead (though at any time I think you may vote Life After Life as number 1) You'll have to let us know if you end up doing your own Women's Prize winner
I do really love Sorrow and Bliss. GC definitely up there but I do think Life After Life might pip Demon to the post depending on the day. 💛
our lists would be the same, but I’d swap out Careless for Home Fire ♥️ justice for Great Circle! 🛩️
Nice! Yes to justice for Great Circle! I read the winner and it was good but nowhere close to GC! I must get to Home Fire. 💛
This was especially interesting to me, because, as you know, I am not always the biggest fan of the books on the Women's Prize lists. So I was curious what books I have read and it turned out to be Lovely Bones, which I also really liked and The Time Traveller's Wife, which I liked back in the day, but it was such a long time ago, that I can't judge if that would still be the case today. The Silence of the Girls I also enjoyed and I liked it a lot more than The Song of Achilles. Also enjoyed Hamnet.
I wasn't the biggest fan of Station Eleven and a bit meh about Sorrow and Bliss and dnf'd Small Angry Planet and My Little Friend (which should have been right up my alley, but was far too meandering for its own good in my humble opinion).
So quite a mixed bag, but not as bad as I expected. 😂
I was also pleasantly surprised when I looked back into the lists and found some books I had really loved in the past. There’s a lot on there, so there might even be more you have loved. I also liked The Silence of the Girls a lot more than Song of Achilles. I think The Little Friend is a strange one, I’d like to go back and read it again to see how I feel about it now. I’ll probably try The Goldfinch first though as I’ve never read that one. 😊📚
22 was a stella year. I personally loved May We Be Forgiven by A.M Homes but I don't think it would be for everyone. Not one for kids either
I really enjoyed reading the shortlist in 2022, it was a strong shortlist. That was the first year I was really interested in reading the prize, but I only read 7 in total (including a DNF within the shortlisted books). Thanks for the recommendation. 😊📚
Can I ask what happened with Tipping the Velvet live? Many dnfs?
No it’s on the way, we just had difficulty setting a date. Hopefully be live in the last week of March for that one. 😊📚
I didn't know Becky Chambers had been longlisted! Between that and Station 11 this year's first-contact climate-fic seems less of an aberration.
It does make you realise that the sci-fi genre hasn’t been completely excluded over the years! I was still quite surprised to see that one on the list though. 😊📚
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I’m now quite concerned that I’ve never read from a winner! What on earth?! 😅🩵
Oh really? You’d best remedy that with a nice Maggie O’Farrell or a Barbara Kingsolver or something. 😂
@@AliceandtheGiantBookshelf I’ll have to!