After the stunning novel “A Brief History of Seven Killings” won last year’s Man Booker Prize, I’m especially excited to see what takes this year's award. Again, we have a compelling longlist of 13 novels. I’m a big supporter of new authors so great to see 4 debut novels included. I suppose you could say the biggest name on the list is J.M. Coetzee who has won the prize twice before. More than anything, this list makes me want to lock myself inside for a week and get reading!

I only managed to correctly guess one book on the longlist and I’ve only read two of them: Deborah Levy’s wildly original novel on family/relationships “Hot Milk” and Elizabeth Strout’s short impactful “My Name is Lucy Barton”. However, I’m really happy about this because many of the books on the list I either have on my shelf or I’ve heard great things about such as Ian McGuire’s “The North Water”, David Szalay’s “All That Man Is”, Ottessa Moshfegh’s “Eileen”, Madeleine Thien’s “Do Not Say We Have Nothing”, David Means’ “Hystopia” and Paul Beatty’s “The Sellout”.

I’m a big fan of A.L. Kennedy and J.M. Coetzee so I’m also excited to read “Serious Sweet” and “The Schooldays of Jesus”. I don’t know anything about Graeme Magrae Burnet’s “His Bloody Project”, Wyl Menmuir’s “The Many” or Virginia Reeves’ “Work Like Any Other”. So I’m glad there are some real surprises there for me to discover.