The order of things

All righty, a hat and some bits of paper were fussed with and an order has been selected. It's going to take a bit of time to get around to everyone, I'm afraid, because there are 24 of us! I hope it doesn't look like too much of a long-term commitment...

So, here we go:

October 07 - Rita
November 07 - millymoo
December 07 - scorpy
January 08 - hungry hungry hypocrite
February 08 - ThirdCat
March 08 - killerrabbit
April 08 - phishez_rule
May 08 - beer and skittles
June 08 - gigglewick
July 08 - audrey
August 08 - actonb
September 08 - Ariel
October 08 - nai
November 08 - harriet
December 08 - sakura
January 09 - Rosanna
February 09 - the ianandan expedition
March 09 - feminkneesm
April 09 - Chesty LaRue
May 09 - kiki
June 09 - yoffi
July 09 - blakkat
August 09 - dot
September 09 - gerl
October 09 - Mary Bennett

In the interest of getting things rolling, I'll take actonb's suggestion and start us off with a book from Booker Prize long list. September's book will be Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones. The English bookies are paying 20/1 on it winning. Ian McEwan is the favourite to win with On Chesil Beach, but I'm still carrying a grudge over the first half of Atonement being such a monumental pain the arse, so I wasn't going to go there.

Here's the blurb from the back of the jacket:

"After the trouble starts and the soldiers arrive on Matilda's tropical island, only one white person stays behind. Mr Watts wears a red nose and pulls his wife around on a trolley. The kids call him Pop Eye. But there is no one else to teach them their lessons. Mr Watts begins to read aloud to the class from his battered copy of Great Expectations, a book by his friend Mr Dickens.

"Soon Dickens' hero Pip starts to come alive for Matilda. She writes his name in the sane and decorates it with shells. Pip becomes as real to her as her own mother, and the greatest friendship of her life has begun.

"But Matilda is not the only one who believes in Pip. And, on an island at war, the power of the imagination can be a dangerously provocative thing."

Admittedly I haven't read Mister Pip yet, so I'm not sure what it will be like. It's had good reviews and it hasn't been on Oprah's Book Club yet, so I figure those are points in its favour. And it's not Ian McEwan, Harry Potter, Jane Austen or The Celestine Prophecy.

I'll post the review on 15 September. Gosh, I hope it's not a dog...