Hugo & Nebula Awards: Best Novels discussion

Our final theme of the year, for the month of December, is Short Books. "Short" is defined as any book under 300 pages from our shelf:

https://www.goodreads.com/group/books...

The idea is to read three short books to get into the normal range of monthly page count. December can seem like a short month with the holidays, family visiting, but also, if people are home or on holiday, they can have more time to read.

With the higher count, feel free to nominate up to three books.

My city library has a challenge each year to read 50 books with various attributes, and one of them this year is "A book with an exclamation mark in the title". That's a tricky one.

Therefore I'll nominate Dorsai!

Feel free to use the very short reads as well.

After checking what's available for me I nominate:

Gather, Darkness! by Fritz Leiber
Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg
Frontera by Lewis Shiner

I nominate The Silent Strength of Stones (Chapel Hollow #2)

Yes, it is book 2, but in reviewing the content of the books here:https://www.goodreads.com/series/5430..., it appears that he protagonists are different, so I'm hoping they are all standalones sharing a common location.

P.S. Book 1, The Thread That Binds the Bones, was a winner or nominee for the Bram Stoker award

Art wrote: "Feel free to use the very short reads as well."

Thanks, I forgot to add that......

I nominate: The Lathe of Heaven. I haven't read any Le Guin yet, so I hope it gets in!

2nd nom: Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. I want to give Philip K Dick another chance to impress me, and reviews say this is one of his best.

3rd nom: Deathworld 1 somehow I already own it, and Z gave it a 5 stars... those are as good reasons as any :)


With the polls, we'll still only get 1 vote between all the books? Or is the polling happening differently this time?

One vote, top three win.

Between Gabi and Sarah all of my titles got nominated.
Gather, Darkness! (also has an exclamation mark!)
The Lathe of Heaven
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

I'd like to nominate Mockingbird by Walter Tevis. I read it early in the year, but I think the group would like it. One of favorite reads this year, Tevis was a great writer.

Then I nominate A Choice of Gods by Clifford D. Simak. Working to complete an SF Grand Master challenge and clear this massive collection of 3 novels off my shelf.

No posts in a week, so I'm putting up the poll.

Here's the link to the poll.

Thanks Allan, and Antti for the link. There really are a lot of good choices, and much less intimidating for a small reader like me. Hope we can do this theme again soon :D

Thanks, Antii, I always mess up that part. Does it show on the splash page? I checked the box but it didn't show up for me yesterday.

I wanted to allow members to vote for three since we have a full list this month. Please feel free to put your #2 and #3 choices in the comments and I'll total them up at the end.

The December winners are:

Gather, Darkness! by Fritz Leiber
The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
A Choice of Gods by Clifford D. Simak

The 3rd book was chosen randomly between the three tied books in the poll.

Thanks Allan

We have three books rivaling the 3rd place. If it is ok with you, I'll use random.org to get the winner

I already did that to get the choices I posted earlier.

I don’t mind if you do that for January though

Allan wrote: "I already did that to get the choices I posted earlier."

So which book won for December? Ok to do it for January

Oleksandr wrote: "Allan wrote: "I already did that to get the choices I posted earlier."

So which book won for December? Ok to do it for January"

Clifford Simak. The three chosen ones are posted up in message #15

I will put them up on the 30th right at midnight. I will also put up the no spoilers threads then. GR will only allow 3 threads to be created at once, so I will have to wait until the next day to put up the spoilers.

I thought about putting them on the group home pages as "upcoming" yesterday, but it is so close to the end of the month, I decided to not bother.

I can put up the January books as upcoming at the same time

Kalin wrote: "Clifford Simak. The three chosen ones are posted ..."

Thanks, silly me not to read up the thread :)

Haha, I was debating a runoff election for January, but we're already well behind in choosing.

So I cannot put up January tomorrow night if someone doesn't decide which. The polls are both ties!

Please do the random numbers thing and post here so that I can put them up as "Upcoming" tomorrow might.

Or not. I can put them up later, or not at all, as happened this month with December's choices. :-)

A little confused. Are we reading three books in Dec. or only one?

Three for December

Gather, Darkness! by Fritz Leiber
The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
A Choice of Gods by Clifford D. Simak

Great, thanks.

We always do short books in December because everyone is so busy. Some year we will probably run out, but we can worry about that then.