Episode 3: Lady Tan's Circle of Women and An American Marriage Review

And I'm recording this during the week where the shortlist for the Women's Prize for Fiction was, well, the winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction has just been announced.

And it's a book called The Correspondent.

Don't ask me for the author right now.

I can't really remember her name, but it sounds really amazing.

And I remember when I saw the list of the shortlist earlier on this week before they announced the winner a couple of days ago, I remember thinking to myself, oh, this is the correspondent looks really good.

And there's a couple more there that look really, really good as well.

And I'll be doing a challenge over the next few weeks or months to try and read all the books in the shortlist.

I think there's about five of them.

But yeah, tell me, do you follow these award ceremonies? Does it float your boats? I think for me, it's a mixed bag, really.

Sometimes you read books in these lists and they are amazing.

But I feel like sometimes also they pick books that are so complex and so unnecessarily hard that, you know, you start reading and you go, why was this picked? So it's not a popularity contest by any chance.

So you're not going to find your, you know, the likes of Akotar, Quicksilver and, you know, all the romantic and romance books in there.

But sometimes there can be some really profound books in there that are really, really, you know, some great authors.

And I'll be reviewing one of the books I'll be reviewing today actually won the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2019.

So it just goes to show that something, yeah, it just, it depends.

And I actually found it fascinating when I was looking at people's reactions to the short list and even the long list, people's reactions really widely varied, right? I think it depends on the kind of books and the genres that you like reading.

So the ones who would typically like books like historical stuff gravitated naturally towards the historical stuff.

The ones who would naturally like romance gravitated towards more romance type stuff.

And, you know, it just, it depends on your own personal taste, I find, which is, which, which makes me wonder, you know, the judges, how did they, like, how did they pick the one that is the winner in the end? Because I'm assuming it's the same with the judging panel, each person on the panel, which by the way, had, you know, Abidari, Aviron Abidari, the British Nigerian author who wrote Stay With Me.

on the panel this year.

And I think the list reflects the diversity of the judging panel as well.

it even makes it more important.

You know, it makes the case even more for why we should have more diversity in the publishing industry, more diversity in reading and, you know, these award bodies, et cetera, because it just, it helps spread the love and it helps make sure that there's inclusivity and we're not only listening and, you know, publishing one type of story all the time.

And, One of the women, one of the authors in the shortlist, can't remember their names now, but there's a black author in the shortlist who was turned down 32 times or something like that, 32 or 34 times, and was only published by Casaba Republic, which is like a black-owned publishing company, the 34th or 35th time.

Isn't that bonkers? So, you know, turned down by 30-something odd publishers only to be shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction.