The gang are back with their usual witches brew of book news, insightful book reviews and discussions, not-book reviews and their dangerously teetering TBR piles.

Books reviewed this episode:

KD: Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart (Picador/Grove Atlantic)

LK: Real Life by Brandon Taylor (Daunt Books)

JT: Earthlings by Sayaka Murata (Granta)

Not books:

KD: Magazines are back! Welcome back Metro and North & South

LK: Season Two of His Dark Materials and Daisy Johnson’s horror fiction recommendations.

JT: Chris Parker’s This is How I Felt

The TBR Pile:

KD: 2020 NZ fiction for judging the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction for the 2021 Ockhams and books from a Fitzcarraldo Editions subscription

LK: White is For Witching by Helen Oyeyemi and The Residents by Lucy Revill

JT: Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar and Remote Sympathy by Catherine Chidgey

Book news:

Shuggie Bain won the Booker Prize! 

The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again by M. John Harrison won the Goldsmith Prize!

A book about the bloody Beatles has won the Baillie Gifford Prize! 

The National Book Awards 2020 winners have been announced!

Also mentioned:

A scathing review of Dolly Alderton’s novel Ghosts

An excellent Guardian interview with Brandon Taylor

The High Low podcast is drawing to an end

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices