I’m back from a lovely vacation on the West Coast and settled back into normal routines. This week I’ll do my usual roundup of what I’ve been listening to and reading before taking a look at this year’s Booker Prize winner and the idea of literary prizes more generally.
Roundup
Music
While we’re still in the first half of November, the music release calendar is already winding down. But that doesn’t mean there haven’t been standouts the past couple weeks! The biggest, most interesting, and most surprising, by far has been Lux by Spanish pop-star Rosalía. Here she’s taken her genre-bending tendencies to new heights, collaborating with award-winning writers and producers and the London Symphony Orchestra, and singing in thirteen languages, to create an incredible piece of art. Because it’s very much ART, it’s not as accessible as most pop music, and I admit I’ll come back to it only when I’m in the mood for something like this, but it’s absolutely an early favourite for the 2026-27 award season.
Other recent highlights include Happiness Is Going to Get You by the always weird-and-wonderful Allie X, and a third album this calendar year from young country songwriter Max McNown.
Songs
- “Kraken,” by Florence + the Machine
- “Hand on the Bible,” by Grace Power
- “What Good?,” by Arkells
- “Knowing You,” by Dagny
Albums
- Lux, by Rosalía
- Happiness is Going to Get You, by Allie X
- Both Sides of the Blade, by Max McNown
- Appaloosa, by Orville Peck
Reading
Vacation reading is always hit-and-miss for me, and it’s generally a time for lighter fare. That’s definitely coloured my reading the past couple weeks. Otherwise, I’ve just been plugging away at some books I’d like to finish before the end of the year. Some highlights include:
- Hi, It’s Me, by Fawn Parker (2024)
- The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison (2014)
- The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, vols 7 and 8, by Beth Brower (2023-2024)
- Julius Julius, by Aurora Stewart de Peña (2025)
In Focus: Prize Winners
On Monday, it was announced that the winner of the 2025 Booker Prize was Flesh, by Daniel Szalay, which is probably my most hated read of the year. While I definitely think there were better options on the shortlist (to say nothing of the longlist, since two of my favourite books didn’t make the shortlist), I’m not surprised or even all that upset that Flesh won. Why? Because it took a huge swing, by centering its narrative on a passive and uncommunicative character. It didn’t connect for me, but clearly it did for a lot of readers. (Its reception has been polarized, but not nearly as polarized as I had expected.)
I’m also not surprised because, my least favourite title from a shortlist winning a major prize is actually a pretty common occurrence. (The past two Giller winners were also books I really didn’t enjoy; we’ll see this week if that pattern continues!)
Award winners as a rule take big risks. That’s what gets the attention of these panels to start with. And, while I generally like most books that make the lists, the bigger the swing, the greater the miss is going to be if it doesn’t hit for me. Flesh is a perfect example. It did what it set out to do so effectively that it elicited a huge response in me. That response was negative, but it still did the thing. And that’s impressive in its own right.
Matthew Root 