I am sure this has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with the fact that Edward St Aubyn (one of Kidd's authors), didn't get on the Man Booker longlist/shortlist this year.

Exactly, Scott. I'd have thought 'readability' was the most bleedin' obvious qualification in a book. To put anything else first borders on pretentious twattery.

"All this Literature Prize does is prove to me that there are still people working in publishing who are more obsessed with a work's literary merit than any sales potential."

Bloody hell, let's hope so!

Don't feel too sorry for Barnes: his view on the prize has been clear from his refusal to get involved with any of it, from the Booker site interviews to the pre-announcement readings and appearances which all the other shortlisted/longlisted authors have done.

"Many words of four syllables" - what a fascinating and extraordinary comment. (I used two words of four or more syllables in that last sentence.) Is this the school of thought which believes that 'great' works of literature have lots of big words? Ever read Kelman, Ishiguro, Coetzee? (To remain simply with authors who have won the Booker.)

"Snobby" is another favourite. I think what it means is to accuse people of caring deeply about literature and of thinking that some books offer better reward than others. I'd certainly plead guilty to that, and I hope Andrew Kidd and the cited authors would too.

But in the end, why care if a prize which doesn't support your own view of literature is established? What harm does it do to you or your own reading choices?

The whole issue about the word "readability" is that people use it to promote their choice of books when other people don't think their choice is very good. Not that literary "snobs" - or in John Self's words, people who care deeply about literature - actively seek out "unreadable" books in order to impose them on people in some de haut en bas education of the masses.

It's just a silly, silly word used as a euphemism. When people claim they want readability, what they really mean is easy-to-readability. Nothing wrong with that - but not, surely, what the Booker was originally set up for, and not the type of book that is currently under-catered for in newspapers, magazines, other prizes, on telly etc.

I didn't even know who Andrew Kidd was when I read this piece, and I certainly don't keep count of which agents have had titles on the Booker lists and which haven't (!). But he is justified in calling into question some aspects of this year's judging process, on the basis that two of the judges have explicitly said that they wanted to seek out what they called 'readable' books to the exclusion of what they call books that people 'admire'. This by definition is prescriptive and wrong, because if you're charged with finding "the best book of the year" within the eligibility criteria - as the Booker judges are - then some of the right candidates are going to be 'readable', some are going to be 'admirable', others might be both, and to narrow your sights before you've even begun can lead only to the sort of criticism which has been levelled at the Booker this year.

This is all so wonderful and funny and had made my day. Who'd have thought Andrew Kidd had such a sense of humour. x

I just don't see the two as mutually exclusive.

Readability is not only used to excuse or explain less literary works, although I accept it can be.

Lots of great works of high literary merit are hugely readable. Many aren't.

Nothing wrong with both. Surely the best books of the year are usually both?

I agree with Alex Clark on this one - if you want (easy)-readability it's the Costas - if you want a serious literature prize, it is, or was, the Booker. The line have got blurred somewhere, this year's shortlist seems deliberately wilful with few exceptions and it doesn't help to have a chair of the world's most recignised literary award who is deeply antagonistic to 'so-called literary critics' - it has lost the Booker much credibility.

"By labeling books that are readable pulp, and those that are hard, serious, you are just perpetuating a divide that does little to help the industry, or send readers to 'good' books."

Who's doing that? Not Alex Clark, not Andrew Kidd, not anyone else that I can see. The 'divide' here is between people (me, Alex, Scott Pack, Andrew Kidd so far as I can tell) who think 'readability' is something which may or may not be present in brilliant books, and the presence or absence of which doesn't determine whether or not the book is brilliant; and those (two of this year's Booker panel, based on public pronouncements) who think 'readability' is a required criterion. It doesn't take much to see which is the more blinkered opinion.