"There is a harmony in autumn," wrote Percy Bysshe Shelley in his 1816 Hymn to Intellectual Beauty "and a lustre in its sky." Two centuries on, the longer nights, crisper mornings and browner leaves are augmented by another annual ritual: the Man Booker prize. This 21st-century hymn to intellectual beauty kicks into higher gear this afternoon at 3.30pm when the shortlist is unveiled and the critical dissection begins.

For me, though, the fun really comes from trying to guess which six novels the judges will deem worthy of shortlist glory - and weeks of front-of-shop exposure in bookshops up and down the land - and which will be cast aside. Last year's most high profile no-show was Ian McEwan, whose 9/11-inspired novel Saturday failed to garner a place in the top six. My prediction for this year's headline-grabbing casualty? Bookies' favourite David Mitchell, whose fourth novel, the semi-autobiographical Black Swan Green, is charming and funny but not really Booker material (his genre-bending tour de force, Cloud Atlas, narrowly lost out to Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty two years ago, and one suspects that this year's longlisting may have reflected that).

As to who will make the cut, it's a fairly tough call this year. The longlist is solid but somewhat undifferentiated; there's a general atmosphere of sober quality to it this year, very different from last year's flashes of glamour.

Having said that, I think it would be a crime if Edward St Aubyn doesn't get through. His return to the destructive Melrose family in the sequel to the Some Hope trilogy, Mother's Milk, is, frankly, dazzling. Sarah Waters is in with a very good shot, and probably two-time Booker-winner Peter Carey, too.

Of the slightly less household names, my three tips would be Claire Messud (whose Manhattan intellegentsia novel The Emperor's Children has been garnering good reviews), James Lasdun's Seven Lies (Lasdun won the National Short Story prize and his stylish prose is in evidence here, too) and So Many Ways to Begin, Jon McGregor's restrained, mature follow-up to If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things.

When it comes to literary prizes, however, we on the Books desk are notoriously bad at picking winners - so please maximise our humiliation by correctly predicting who'll go through. A copy of [digs through pile of books behind desk to find suitable candidate] John Stubbs' Donne: the Reformed Soul to the first person to get all six names right ...