So my reaction to this morning’s fiction longlist was basically, “Huh.” Because I haven’t read a single book on this list and I’ve only heard of about half of them. I like to think I keep up with these things, but apparently not! Anyway, that is not a complaint. I’m interested to see how I feel once I’ve read them.

Without further ado, here’s the longlist:

• Dark at the Crossing, Elliot Ackerman
• The King Is Always Above the People: Stories, Daniel Alarcón
• Miss Burma, Charmaine Craig
• Manhattan Beach, Jennifer Egan
• The Leavers, Lisa Ko
• Pachinko, Min Jin Lee
• Her Body and Other Parties: Stories, Carmen Maria Machado
• A Kind of Freedom, Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
• Sing, Unburied, Sing, Jesmyn Ward
• Barren Island, Carol Zoref

I think this is a really intriguing list. Before this morning, only Manhattan Beach, The Leavers, and Sing, Unburied, Sing had been on my radar–I’d heard of a couple of the others but I wasn’t actively planning to read them.

I’m always excited to see short stories on lists like this, because I think they’re so often under appreciated. The list is geographically and culturally diverse, which is exciting to me. And 80% women! Overall, I’m looking forward to digging into this bunch of books.