Man Booker longlist announced

The Man Booker Prize longlist was announced yesterday, starting the much-anticipated awards season of 2009. The list is generating a ton of buzz, as many of the authors are first time nominees, and three of them are major authors with either a previous Booker win (Byatt, Coetzee) or multiple nominations (Toibin). I haven't read any of the books yet, and the Coetzee title hasn't been released yet, but the award isn't announced until October 8, so we have some time to catch up. Here's the list (from The Millions):

• The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt
• Summertime by J.M Coetzee (excerpt)
• The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds
• How to Paint a Dead Man by Sarah Hall
• The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey (excerpt)
• Me Cheeta by James Lever ("I'm the real Cheeta")
• Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (excerpt)
• The Glass Room by Simon Mawer (excerpt pdf)
• Not Untrue and Not Unkind by Ed O'Loughlin
• Heliopolis by James Scudamore (excerpt)
• Brooklyn by Colm Toibin (excerpt)
• Love and Summer by William Trevor (excerpt)
• The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters (excerpt pdf)

Perhaps the biggest buzz is for James Lever's book Me Cheeta, which is a faux memoir of a movie star chimpanzee. Well, they all look interesting anyhow.