Forget the Booker Prize - here's what you need to read this summer

One of the least appealing aspects of going away for a summer holiday – apart from the airport, the hotel, the children and the stomach upset – is knowing what on earth to pack. iPod speakers or headphones? Shorts or swimming trunks? Overpriced credit card or overpriced euros? Five minutes before I’m due to leave, there are invariably two competing piles of clothes on my bed: the damp selection I wanted to take but forgot to wash in time; and the reserve pile, led by an unloved Hawaiian shirt which makes its guest appearance once a year.

Meanwhile, a stack of books totters unsteadily in the corner, each one sufficiently heavy to take one’s luggage into the danger zone, incurring an astronomical fine. Should you ditch the weighty Booker-nominated Hollinghurst, which you know you’re not going to read, in favour of two trashy thrillers, even though you’ll get through the first one before the aircraft has finished taxiing? Or should you leave them all behind and buy an expensive Kindle at the airport which you’ll end up dropping in the pool?

The summer market is vital to the industry – second only in importance to the run-up to Christmas. “I wouldn’t take on an author who didn’t produce a book a year,” says Madeleine Buston, a literary agent at Daley Anderson, which represents a wide range of popular novelists, including the thriller-writer Lee Child and Victoria Fox, billed as the new Jackie Collins.

One wonders, though, if they’ll be buying the Booker longlist in any sort of bulk. When announced this week, the general reaction was bemusement, both by its inclusions and its omissions. Where was Graham Swift’s elegiac Wish You Were Here or Ali Smith’s genuinely amusing There But For The? And while the near-inevitable appearance of Julian Barnes, three-times a nominee but never victorious, and Alan Hollinghurst, the favourite, were welcomed, critics were quick to pick up on the unusual number of thrillers by unknown debut authors. Perhaps, they said, it had something to do with a judging panel led by Stella Rimington, the former head of MI5, and including four thriller writers.

More pertinently, it is difficult to get too excited by the prospect of tackling the Booker longlist while relaxing on a beach. Although one shouldn’t judge a list by its synopses, two of the novels deal with suicide, two with the Nazis (obviously), one with Peckham gangs, another with stabbings in East London and another with a girl experiencing love, betrayal and date rape while struggling to save the human race from a plague of dying pregnant women. Frankly, most of us go on holiday to get away from this sort of thing.

Penguins? On a plane?!? | Travel Blog

There were odd noises coming from two crates covered with blankets in the front row of the plane. We all assumed they were dogs or cats but an odd noise bellowed from the crates. To our amazement there were two VIP passengers traveling with us, Pete and Pat penguin from Sea World San Diego. They were in Sacramento visiting the capital with a few of their trainers promoting conservation and were returning home. As Pete and Pat conversed back and forth, the plane listened with curiosity. To our amazement one of the trainers got on the microphone and told us the captain has given permission for Pete and Pat to come out of their crates and walk the aisles of the airplane. As they waddled up and down the aisles there were giggles and smiles among us all. We had the opportunity to see them up close as well as learn all about where they live in the wild and at Sea World.

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