So it's Nobel Prize week again...

[HarryT]

Interesting that Ladbrokes had it right. Obviously some people thought she was likely to win!

Originally Posted by kennyc

Interesting list/analysis (pre-award) here:

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/1...ize-literature

Thanks that was a very interesting read. I loved this line:

In other words, Ladbrokes’s odds are based on betting action, not reality: just because a writer is a favorite of the weirdos who spend their hard-earned money betting on cultural prizes doesn’t mean that that same writer is a favorite of the Nobel Academy.

[issybird]

Great read. I admit, though, that the Nobel Prize becomes increasingly irrelevant to my own reading interests. I like litfic, but I'm much less interested in political commentary that doesn't pass a literary litmus test, however nebulous such a concept be.

[Yolina]

Originally Posted by Billi

And in Germany she is not unknown, at least she was awarded several literary prices here.

Same in France. I am aware of her stuff but never read it as I don't really enjoy non-fiction (with a couple of exceptions of course ).

I don't really care who wins what TBH

[Billi]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Mankell is dead. Nobel Prizes are not awarded posthumously.

Harrry, I know! But he was alive at January 31st, the deadline for all the proposals, and he was alive when the Academy gave the comittee the shortlist.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Interesting that Ladbrokes had it right. Obviously some people thought she was likely to win!

So obviously a rather well known author.

[doubleshuffle]

Originally Posted by tompe

So obviously a rather well known author.

She is, but it doesn't follow from her Ladbrokes odds. Those only tell us she's an author someone in Sweden must have bet a few kronor on. There was a long comment last year in the Guardian comment section translating the juicy bits from a report on Lit Nobel betting a Swedish paper had published.

TL;DR: A bet of 20 pounds made by someone from Sweden will send an author high up on the list of favourites. I'll put the whole thing in spoiler tags:

Spoiler:

Last year, Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter investigated the Nobel odds. http://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/det-bli...ka-vi-sla-vad/ Ngugi was the early favourite in 2013 as well. Why? Because of one single bet - by the journalist writing the article. The size of the bet? 200 kronor - less than £20.

Quote:
---Immediately after my bet Ladbrokes stops play, which is noticed by The Atlantic, who write a long speculative article - "Is it Ngugi wa Thiong'o's turn this year?" - based on Ladbrokes' press relations manager Alex Donohue saying they've received a large bet from a customer in Sweden.

(...)

"It's a snowball effect," Donohue explains on the phone from London, "when Ngugi wa Thiong'o is written about, more people bet on him and we we have to lower the odds to make even."
That Swedish customer...
"Yes," says Donohue.
That was me.
"Oh, it was you, was it. Terrific," he says dryly.---

The same journalist also visited another betting firm, Unibet (the ones who kept insisting Chinua Achebe was in with a shot up until mid-September 2013).
Quote:
---I ask him if I can place a bet on someone who's not on their lists - which Unibet's customer service had denied the day before - and he asks if I have a specific name in mind. Svetlana Alexievich, I say, and he writes it down.
Who do you want to see win?
"Bob Dylan would be fun. Or Paul Auster."
But he's not even on your lists.
"I'll have to add him when I add that Alexievich woman."
An hour after the interview, two names are added to Unibet's list: Svetlana Alexievich and Paul Auster, at 10 and 30 to 1, respectively. An hour later they're at 9 and 10. By Monday, when the Swedish Academy announce that the Prize will be announced the next Thursday, Alexievich is second on Unibet's list at 6 to 1 and is mentioned as a favourite in an article by Swedish news agency TT. At the same time, she shows up at Ladbrokes, at 51 to 1. By the evening, the odds have dropped to 12 at Ladbrokes and 5 at Unibet.---

From the same article:
- The master list used by Ladbrokes, and copied by everyone else, was put together in the mid-00s by a small group of employees interested in literature with the help of "some external experts" - ie they phoned up a few journalists and asked about their favourites. The same list is still used today, with a few modifications.
- "Significant" bets are anything over about £10, especially if they come from Sweden.
- Ladbrokes maintain this is a good way to make the discussions about the Nobel accessible to the general public. An unnamed source is more blunt: "It gives lazy journalists something to relate to, so they can have an opinion and use our research."

http://discussion.theguardian.com/co...alink/40312120

[tompe]

Originally Posted by doubleshuffle

TL;DR: A bet of 20 pounds made by someone from Sweden will send an

Well, the Swedish article has one guy saying that only the money matter and another guy saying they google the person making the bet to see if they need to adjust the odds. So not clear cut.

[HomeInMyShoes]

I've had at least one title on my list to read for a while. I only came across her from my geography challenge and Belarus is not the easiest country to check off the list. I was going to read Voices from Chernobyl. I had even penciled her in for my geography BINGO card for next year's reading challenge.

I should probably request it now as there's only one copy in the province and no other titles by her. It is going to be a popular title for the next while.