The Man Booker Prize Shortlist – How many have you read?

I used to make a point of buying books on the Man Booker Prize shortlist. Not because an award tells us what books are great (I’ve tended to actually dislike most of the books I’ve read off shortlists in the past!), or even whether they are going to last long after their first printings, but because the shortlist told me something about what our culture values in the contemporary novel. This semester, one of your aims should be to get a grip on the state of contemporary literature, and so the prize is not a bad place to start.