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Do Booker winners become so for a reason? The 2026 Longlist came out on 28 July. Update.

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Do Booker winners become so for a reason? The 2026 Longlist came out on 28 July. The shortlist is on 22nd September. THIS IS MY FINAL LIST BEFORE SHORTLIST WITH UNCERTAIN PREDICTIONS THEREOF. SOME BOOKS STILL UNREAD. WILL READ ON KINDLE IF SHORTLISTED.

The question is open. Each year I set out to read at least some of the books. Here is the list for this year, which I will update as I progress through my reading and responses:

2026 Booker Longlist – The Books I read this year.

I’m aiming to keep purchases lower – but only by not buying unless in 1^st impression.

Here’s the Longlist – and how I’ll record my adventures with it. The 13 nominated books, and their UK publishers, are: 

Bought (B)	Date Start/ Finish / Order of Preference	The 2026 longlist is:	Outcome:Blog = URL Explanation Paragraph no. below
Not Yet Pub. April ‘26	Only read if on shortlist _ Kindle	The Shadow of the Object by Chloe Aridjis (Chatto & Windus)
Ordered Waterstones 28/8. Bought 8/9/26	15/9/26 – 18/09/26	Switzy by Emma Cline (Chatto & Windus)	Should we start much earlier than we do learning about ‘Life, the littleness of it’. Do little books about littleness in enlarged contexts need prizes or forgetting? This is a blog on Emma Cline (2026) ‘Switzy’. – Steve_Bamlett_blog
B 28/7/26	7/8/26 – 11/8/26	Helen of Nowhere by Makenna Goodman (Fitzcarraldo Editions)	https://livesteven.com/2026/08/13/in-lieu-of-a-literary-dinner-consider-what-literature-is-this-is-a-blog-on-makenna-goodman-2026-helen-of-nowhere/
Not Yet Was Shortlisted	Only read if on shortlist _ Kindle	The End of Everything by M. John Harrison (Serpent’s Tail)
Ordered Waterstones 28/7. Arrived 7/9/26 SHORTLIST YES	8/9/26 -14/9/26 In process blog mention: ‘Don’t get me into some philosophical bullshit about lie versus fiction. Fiction is creation. Lie is distortion. One don’t have a fucking thing to do with the other’. Words from Marlon James ‘The Disappearers’ (2026). – Steve_Bamlett_blog	The Disappearers by Marlon James (Hamish Hamilton)	As I said in an earlier blog, some books say we are already switching lives with a ‘fictional character’ in order to survive. The absolute best and most comprehensive writing of our time must ask, as Marlon James allows his characters to do, ‘Why am I writing this shit?’ Is it because our characters switch to fictional form so often? This is a blog on Marlon James (2026) ‘The Disappearers’. – Steve_Bamlett_blog
Not Yet Pub. Mar ‘26 Was Shortlisted	Only read if on shortlist _ Kindle	Black Bag by Luke Kennard (John Murray)
B 21/7/26 SHORTLIST No	29/7/26 – 2/8/26 / 1	The Renovation by Kenan Orhan (Hamish Hamilton)	https://livesteven.com/2026/08/04/why-not-name-troy-byzantium-constantinople-and-istanbul-and-keep-proliferating-names-for-the-primary-city-of-the-golden-horn-until-you-reach-10-such-names-for-cities-rich-in-trade-that-are-for-ever/
B 28/7/26 SHORTLIST Yes	17/8/26 – 24/8/26	May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry (Granta)	https://livesteven.com/2026/08/26/the-seams-are-pulled-tight-the-threads-will-surely-begin-to-break-but-is-it-if-theyre-honest-not-a-little-thrilling-this-is-a-blog-on-rebecca-perry-2026-may-we-feed/
B 28/7/26	2/8/26 – 4/8/26 / 4	The Palm House by Gwendoline Riley (Picador)	https://livesteven.com/2026/08/06/i-used-to-worry-about-finding-out-that-a-novel-was-not-for-me-but-you-dont-have-to-like-writing-just-because-in-its-own-terms-it-is-good-this-is-a-blog-on-gwendoline-ril/
B 1/7/26 SHORTLIST Yes	Finished 11/7/26 / 3	The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout (Viking)	https://livesteven.com/2026/07/12/this-blog-uses-elizabeth-strout-2026-the-things-we-never-say-as-a-test-case-for-a-thesis-based-on-the-difficulty-of-erasing-trends-from-history-in-it-the-narrator-says-that-artie-dam-thinks-h/
B On publication SHORTLIST Yes	Finished 6/6/26 / 2	John of John by Douglas Stuart (Picador)	https://livesteven.com/2026/06/09/self-confidence-is-an-illusion-as-the-best-novels-tell-you-try-for-resilience-and-the-drive-to-move-on-first-of-all-think-more-deeply-about-what-selves-are-the-guardian-entitles-its-review-of/
B 28/7/26 SHORTLIST No	5/8/26 – 6/8/26	All Them Dogs by Djamel White (John Murray)	In Djamel White’s novel ‘All Them Dogs’ being ‘officially an adult’ is learning to no longer be ‘fighting an urge to pop’ and becoming in control of how you appear and how much you visibly react: ‘Keep it there and keep it steady’. But in that novel the desire to be ‘officially an adult’ is the reason we lose responsibility for ‘the child’ we find in the world or inside us, failing to safeguard it: the mark of effective adult responsibility. – Steve_Bamlett_blog
B 30/7/26	12/8/26 – 16/8/26	The Vivisectors by Missouri Williams (4th Estate)	Agathe, the first-person narrator of ‘The Vivisectors’ tells us that she has ‘never been good at …bringing disparate events into a cohesive narrative’ , such that either its parts looked like statues standing independently, thus to be gazed at or mixed up as if they were an ‘inchoate mass’. This is a blog on Missouri Williams (2026) ‘The Vivisectors’. – Steve_Bamlett_blog

Quick Paragraphs

I use these to record reading a novel but choosing not to blog on it.

All the best

Steve