Fridays are the new Mondays. I now have conclusive proof.
Whiffled into work with a spring in my step and a tin of biscuits in my hand. All was well with the world.
Got to work, checked emails, all went wrong.
For lo, there lurking in my inbox like a roasting tin that you turn round and catch sight of just after you’ve drained all the washing up water, was an email from CILIP with the new Carnegie 2011 shortlist.
And what a list.
I’m still seething hours later. Admittedly there is always at least one howler on there. The type of book that has us all scratching our heads asking ‘how could they shortlist that? How could they? Did they even read it?’
This year that book is ‘Monsters of Men’. 300 pages too long, central characters with no development and a bleating tendency to cry each others names in agonised fashion, a plot the author couldn’t be bothered with, quite a good bit with a horse and the biggest cop-out ending to rival ‘it was all just a dream’.
Such is my loathing for this book – inexcusably bad when the two preceding it were so good – that it has instantly made me despise the rest of the shortlist. Quite unreasonably so, since I’ve only read one other book on it.
When I saw MoM on the longlist I did half jokingly say that I’d ditch Carnegie completely if it made the shortlist, since there was absolutely no reason for it to do so. Now it’s happened I find that I really do want nothing to do with it.
Oh dear, dear. Excuse me while I pick all my toys up and put them back in my pram.
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