The Booker Prize shortlist has been announced with the usual mix of criticism and praise from various quarters. Indeed, the controversy over each year's list is as much a tradition as the Prize itself. For example, Ron Sharp, arts correspondent for The Independent criticized the omission of Alan Hollinghurst's The Stranger's Child from the shortlist; while Boyd Tonkin, literary editor for the Independent opines that:

"the process seems to have lost much of its focus. It now delivers a curiously mixed bag of worthwhile novels. So what? No longer does the Man Booker seem to want to test the year's output against the highest standards of literary ambition and artistry...many accomplished authors who failed to make the long-list will be wondering what the Booker is precisely for these days."

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At BookBrowse we don't just review books we also explore the stories behind the books. For example, here is our "Beyond the Book" feature for Anne Fortier's "Juliet" which published in paperback a couple of weeks ago...

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"Thanks to art, instead of seeing only one world and time period, our own, we see it multiplied and can peer into other times, other worlds which offer windows to other lives. Each time we enter imaginatively into the life of another, it's a small step upwards in the elevation of the human race.

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Over the last few years we've discovered many exceptional books through BookBrowse's "First Impressions" program, including these three Fall debut novels which our members are particularly enthusiastic about:

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Much has been said about the reasons for the demise of Borders, but Raymond Rose's article in last week's Publishers Weekly really hit the nail on the head for me. He writes,

"My sorrow isn't for the death of this company but for its employees. They're the real victims here. In my store, we had an amazing group. There was the elementary school teacher who worked every weekend and made the most magical children's recommendations; the young woman who could guide both newbies and skilled knitters alike through the needlecraft books; the tattooed graduate student who could talk your ear off about Thomas Hobbes... or Batman, your choice; and the spitfire supervisor who could hunt down the perfect mystery novel. That's just five people in my store. Imagine the number of original, talented people in the other 600-plus stores that have closed or will close later this year...

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It's rare that a book trailer catches my eye, but this one for Wonderstruck, Brian Selznick's follow up to The Adventures of Hugo Cabret, is great as it gives both a sense of the uniqueness of the book and the author behind it...

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