The Guardian reports on the Booker longlist

There is something amazing about the fact that this list provokes the English betting chains to produce lists of the odds on each book winning. I do think it's a more open list than the last few years; I've only read a handful of the ones on the list, and not many more of the authors' other books either. Lots of first and second novels. The two frontrunners seem to be Mitchell's Cloud Atlas and Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty, certainly the two I've been meaning to read anyway; must get hold of copies ASAP.