Man Booker Prize 2011

It’s been ages since we’ve posted anything. Hopefully we’ll be out of our summer rut pretty soon.

The Short list for the Man Booker Prize are out and there are some interesting titles. The Sisters Brothers, in particular, sounds fascinating:

From the author of the acclaimed Ablutions, this dazzlingly original novel is a darkly funny, offbeat western about a reluctant assassin and his murderous brother. Oregon, 1851. Eli and Charlie Sisters, notorious professional killers, are on their way to California to kill a man named Hermann Kermit Warm. On the way, the brothers have a series of unsettling and violent experiences in the Darwinian landscape of Gold Rush America. Charlie makes money and kills anyone who stands in his way; Eli doubts his vocation and falls in love. And they bicker a lot. Then they get to California, and discover that Warm is an inventor who has come up with a magical formula, which could make all of them very rich. What happens next is utterly gripping, strange and sad. Told in deWitt’s darkly comic and arresting style, The Sisters Brothers is the kind of western the Coen Brothers might write – stark, unsettling and with a keen eye for the perversity of human motivation. Like his debut novel Ablutions, it is a novel about the things you tell yourself in order to be able to continue to live the life you find yourself in, and what happens when those stories no longer work. It is an inventive and strange and beautifully controlled piece of fiction and displays an exciting expansion of Dewitt’s range.

eccentric characters and a comparison to the Coen Brothers? I’m sold, this is going on my Amazon wish list.

Half Blood Blues interests me for a completely different reason. I’ve always wondered why movies, even lousy ones, get to have soundtracks and books don’t. Especially for books that rely heavily on atmosphere; just imagine listening to the Lord of The Rings soundtrack while or after reading the book or consider the many songs inspired by literature. Music, imho, is a great form of art and is second only to literature and the two combined would create a magnificant more encompassing experience.

Anyway, back to Half Blood Blues the author has created a playlist on Spotify with thee music that inspired her book. I’m too lazy to “get spotify” so let me know if you’re a fan of the “Word/Music Experience” (name is a work in progress )