Preparing for my MA and for teaching advanced writing and creative writing (prose) from October I have been bathing in a pool of books this summer, which is something of a dream come true.

Yesterday the longlist for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction was released, giving me a plethora of books to enjoy in the coming weeks.

Did you know Virginia Woolf read a book a day when she wasn’t writing? That’s awesome. As I read I focussing not only on the structure and approaches used by the writer to achieve his or her story, but I’m working on picking up my reading speed again – now that reading is less for absolute pleasure and more for improvement the more I read the better. After all, what is a writer that doesn’t read?!

Here is the list – I’d love to have your recommendations if you’ve read any of these.

Peter Carey Parrot and Oliver in America (Faber and Faber)

Emma Donoghue Room (Pan MacMillan – Picador)

Helen Dunmore The Betrayal (Penguin – Fig Tree)

Damon Galgut In a Strange Room (Grove Atlantic – Atlantic Books)

Howard Jacobson The Finkler Question (Bloomsbury)

Andrea Levy The Long Song (Headline Publishing Group – Headline Review)

Tom McCarthy C (Random House – Jonathan Cape)

David Mitchell The Thousand Autumns of Zacob de Zoet (Hodder & Stoughton – Sceptre)

Lisa Moore February (Random House – Chatto & Windus)

Paul Murray Skippy Dies (Penguin – Hamish Hamilton)

Rose Tremain Trespass (Random House – Chatto & Windus)

Christos Tsiolkas The Slap (Grove Atlantic – Tuskar Rock)

Alan Warner The Stars in the Bright Sky (Random House – Jonathan Cape)