Six books, 88 days, about 25 pages a day. Start with Black Bag on Monday 28 September, finish three books before the winner is announced on Monday 9 November, and close with The Things We Never Say on Christmas Eve. This is a plan for the 2026 shortlist only; it is dated, and it will be updated with the winner. Last verified 25 September 2026.
The 2026 Booker Prize shortlist was announced on 22 September: six novels, chosen from 163 submissions by a panel chaired by Mary Beard with Raymond Antrobus, Jarvis Cocker, Rebecca Liu and Patricia Lockwood. The Booker Prize Foundation already tells you what each book is about and publishes a reading guide for every one. What nobody publishes is a schedule: how to get through all six before Christmas, in what order, and what to do when the winner is announced halfway through. That is all this page is.
What Highstreett returned for “the best earlier novel by each of M. John Harrison, Marlon James, Luke Kennard, Elizabeth Strout and Douglas Stuart”
- The Pastel City, M. John Harrison (1972)
- Amy and Isabelle, Elizabeth Strout (1999)
- John Crow's Devil, Marlon James (2005)
See this result · run 25 September 2026
Editor’s verdict: asked for a backlist to go with the shortlist, it verified three first novels rather than the best ones, and found nothing it could confirm by Douglas Stuart or Luke Kennard, so treat it as a start, not a finish-early shelf. An earlier run asking for the shortlist itself verified nothing at all: the six are too new for the catalogues it checks against. Neither run can put six books into an order, which is the only thing on this page it could not have found.
How the order works
- Alternate the weight. No two heavy books back to back: a comedy, a strange short book, a family novel, a debut, the long one, a quiet one.
- Read the one you would skip early. The End of Everything goes second, while the plan still has momentum.
- Give the longest book the most time. The Disappearers gets 24 days, more than a quarter of the plan.
- Hold your nerve on 9 November. Do not reshuffle to read the winner next. Read all six on equal terms, then decide whether you agree.
Page counts are the UK hardbacks, 2,160 pages in all. Paperbacks and ebooks will differ; the order still works.
Before the winner: 28 September to 8 November
Three books in six weeks, finishing the night before the announcement. The comedy first for momentum, the book most readers would skip second, and the heaviest family novel given three weeks, which doubles as your slack if you fall behind early.
1. Black Bag, Luke Kennard
28 September to 11 October · campus comedy · 400 pages · the easy way in
An out-of-work actor spends a university term sitting in lectures zipped inside a black bag, as the anonymous subject of an experiment, and the students around him slowly start to project their lives onto him. It is based on a real 1967 psychology experiment about how people come to like what they see often. It is not short, but it is the funniest and fastest of the six, and starting with the book you are likeliest to enjoy is how a six-book plan survives its first fortnight.
Edition: John Murray hardback, 400 pages.
2. The End of Everything, M. John Harrison
12 to 18 October · strange, bleak, funny · 208 pages · the one you would skip
A man scavenges objects from the shoreline of a run-down Kent seaside town while the country falls apart around him: government has collapsed, Europe has gone, and strange creatures of no known origin have begun to appear. It is the book a literary reader wary of science fiction is most likely to leave until last and then never open, which is why it goes second, in a single week, while the plan still has momentum. At 81, Harrison would be the oldest winner in the prize's history.
Content note: societal collapse and deliberately unsettling imagery.
Edition: Serpent's Tail hardback, 208 pages.
3. John of John, Douglas Stuart
19 October to 8 November · family novel · 416 pages · three weeks, with slack
Cal returns, broke, from art school to the Isle of Harris in the late 1990s and to his father, a strict Presbyterian deacon, and the novel is what the two of them cannot say to each other. A reader who came through Shuggie Bain will move quickly; everyone else should use the three weeks, because this is the emotionally heaviest book before the announcement and the one to take slowly. If you are behind from the first fortnight, this is where you catch up.
Content note: religious repression, shame and homophobia.
Edition: Picador hardback, 416 pages.
After the winner: 9 November to 24 December
Three books in six and a half weeks. A short debut as a breather after the announcement, the longest book given the most time, and the quietest saved for Christmas week.
4. May We Feed the King, Rebecca Perry
9 to 19 November · debut novel · 272 pages · the breather
A reluctant medieval king, crowned only because his brothers died first, is intercut with a modern curator whose job is to recreate the rooms of his palace for visitors. Perry is a poet, whose first collection was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, and the novel has already won the 2026 Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize. It is the lightest weight on the list and goes straight after the announcement, when the temptation to abandon the plan and read the winner is strongest.
Edition: Granta hardback, 272 pages.
5. The Disappearers, Marlon James
20 November to 13 December · Kingston, 1988 · 640 pages · the long one: 24 days
In Kingston in 1988 a mob attacks a group of gay men rehearsing a play; one is killed and two vanish, and the novel follows what that night does to everyone near it. It is 640 pages, three times the length of the shortest book here, and Dwight Garner in the New York Times called it a maximalist banquet. It gets the longest stretch in the plan, and it belongs in the second half, once you have read yourself into the pace.
Content note: graphic homophobic violence and a killing, drawn from the real conditions of the period; explicit sex.
Edition: Hamish Hamilton hardback, 640 pages.
6. The Things We Never Say, Elizabeth Strout
14 to 24 December · quiet novel · 224 pages · for Christmas week
Artie Dam, a 57-year-old history teacher in coastal Massachusetts, comes quietly apart through the summer and autumn of 2024, with the American election in the background. The judges called it a calm antidote to contemporary events, and after The Disappearers that is exactly what it is. The lightest daily load of the plan, for the busiest fortnight of the year.
Content note: suicidal thoughts.
Edition: Viking hardback, 224 pages.
The honest bit
Two things can break this plan. The first is getting the books: the shortlist announcement empties shelves, and on the day we checked the London Review Bookshop had sold out of all six, with more on the way. Order or reserve early, and remember your library, where reservations for prize books are free and fill up fast. The second is pace. Twenty-five pages a day is comfortable for someone who already reads most evenings and a stretch for anyone starting from nothing. If that is you, drop to five and skip the one you would least have chosen yourself; finishing five beats abandoning six.
And this is not a discovery page. Every book here is about to be handed to you by every bookshop table in the country. For books nobody else is recommending, the rest of our reading recommendations are built the other way round.
Questions
How many pages a day is it to read the Booker shortlist by Christmas?
About 25. The six UK hardbacks come to roughly 2,160 pages, and 28 September to 24 December is 88 days. The plan above keeps every book between about 20 and 30 pages a day, with the heaviest stretches early, when you have the most momentum.
When you have finished all six and want the next book on whichever one stayed with you, describe it to Highstreett’s book search in a sentence. It checks each title against a real edition before it shows you.
Find your next book after the Booker
For another finite reading plan, built on one question rather than one prize, see A first term in twelve books.