{"id":6480,"date":"2011-10-04T11:01:07","date_gmt":"2011-10-04T15:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=6480"},"modified":"2016-07-08T17:24:50","modified_gmt":"2016-07-08T21:24:50","slug":"2011-giller-prize-shortlist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2011\/10\/04\/2011-giller-prize-shortlist\/","title":{"rendered":"2011 Giller Prize Shortlist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The 2011 Giller Prize shortlist has been announced.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><em>The Free Word<\/em><\/strong>, by David Bezmozgis (my review <a title=\"Mookse Review of The Free World\" href=\"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2011\/09\/07\/david-bezmozgis-the-free-world\/\">here<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li><strong><em>The Antagonists<\/em><\/strong>, by Lynn Coady<\/li>\n<li><strong><em>The Sisters Brothers<\/em><\/strong>, by Patrick deWitt (my review <a title=\"Mookse Review of The Sisters Brothers\" href=\"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2011\/08\/17\/patrick-dewitt-the-sisters-brothers\/\">here<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li><strong><em>Half-Blood Blues<\/em><\/strong>, by Esi Edugyan<\/li>\n<li><strong><em>Better Living Through Plastic Explosives<\/em><\/strong>, by Zsuzsi Gartner (my review <a title=\"Mookse Review of Better Living Through Plastic Explosives\" href=\"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2011\/10\/03\/zsuzsi-gartner-better-living-through-plastic-explosives\/\">here<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li><strong><em>The Cat&#8217;s Table<\/em><\/strong>, by Michael Ondaatje<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>One thing is for sure, the judges gave themselves a lot of good books to choose from.\u00a0We were very impressed with the longlist. Sad to say, though, that from our discussions\u00a0(aside from Kevin, most of us have read only a third or so of the longlist), the books we\u00a0thought\u00a0good but not great made the shortlist.\u00a0I&#8217;m particularly lost as to why Gartner&#8217;s short story collection made the shortlist. I thought it was full of\u00a0mixed metaphors that made no sense (and not in a good way). I&#8217;m also pretty sure that, of the two Westerns, the deWitt is the lesser\u00a0(I have not read the new Vanderhaege book, but I&#8217;m pretty sure I&#8217;ll think it is a better book that <em>The Sisters Brothers<\/em>). Well, I guess we can&#8217;t be happy all the time, and I&#8217;m still thrilled at the great reading that the Giller panel gave us this year.<\/p>\n<p>The Shadow Giller jury has been very impressed with the longlist and supplied their own thoughts on a potential shortlist yesterday (we were way off! getting only <em>The Free World<\/em> right), so please click <a title=\"Shadow Giller Pre-Shortlist Thoughts\" href=\"http:\/\/kevinfromcanada.wordpress.com\/2011\/10\/03\/shadow-giller-jury-shortlist-thoughts\/\">here <\/a>to go to KfC&#8217;s webpage to see our thoughts. Kevin will be updating that post later on to share some of our thoughts on the official shortlist.<\/p>\n<p>Well, I don&#8217;t have a lot of reading to do to get this shortlist out of the way. I think KfC has to read only one title &#8212; <em>Better Living Through Plastic Explosives<\/em>. I have <em>The Cat&#8217;s Table<\/em> on had, so that will be next. I hope to get to a few of the long list titles that missed the cut, in particular Vanderhaege&#8217;s <em>A Good Man<\/em> and Laferriere&#8217;s <em>The Return<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>The winner will be announced November 8, 2011.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Giller Prize shortlist has been announced. <a href=\"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2011\/10\/04\/2011-giller-prize-shortlist\/\"><u>Read the full post<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14190,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[798],"tags":[],"coauthors":[505],"class_list":["post-6480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Giller-Logo.jpg?fit=225%2C225&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-1Gw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6480"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19197,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6480\/revisions\/19197"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6480"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=6480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}