The Orange Prize longlist is out, and the judges are complaining it was a miserable time going through the books. Oh, I see. This is just an English thing. Thanks for paying me to be a high profile arbiter of taste: you all suck. Got it. Here’s chair Daisy Goodwin complaining:

To book lovers, it might appear to be a delicious, if demanding, treat – the opportunity to devour more than 100 novels by women writers and award one of them the prestigious Orange prize.

But the chair of this year’s judging panel has launched a stinging criticism of the current “grim” crop of women’s fiction – complaining that female authors appear to have suffered a collective sense of humour failure.

“There’s not been much wit and not much joy, there’s a lot of grimness out there,” Daisy Goodwin, the author and TV producer, told the Guardian. “There are a lot of books about Asian sisters. There are a lot of books that start with a rape. Pleasure seems to have become a rather neglected element in publishing.”

Reading the 129 entries to this year’s competition had sometimes driven Goodwin to despair, she said, as she revealed this year’s longlist. “I think the misery memoir has had its day, but there are an awful lot of books out there which had not a shred of redemption in them. I’m more of a light and shade person and there does need to be some joy, not just misery.”

“I was surprised at how little I laughed … and the ones where there was humour were much appreciated I can tell you.”

I’d like to point out than an old ‘Ninja friend, Laila Lalami, formerly of the Moorish Girl blog, is on the list for her book, Secret Son, which I haven’t had time to get into yet. My loss. But now there’s an urgency here. I smells a shortlist a-comin’.