Hugo & Nebula Awards: Best Novels discussion

In April, by request, we're trying something different: two re-reads, i.e. books that the group has read before. Since 2018, we've read 166 books, or 26% of the H/N list, and that gives us a decent list to choose from, but we'll exclude 2024-25 as those are just too recent.

Books will be on any of the shelves labeled as "Read", with a few restrictions:
- Must be a Hugo or Nebula nominee
- May not be a group read from 2024-25 (choose from 2018-23)
- If you choose a book from a series, it should be the first book

As always, if you find a book that's shelved erroneously, post it here so that one of the mods can make the correction

I’ll nominate Among Others by Jo Walton and Jem by Frederik Pohl. (Hope I understood the rules correctly.)

It'll be much easier to pick from this google doc, which lists every book we've read in chronological order: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1W...

Just choose something from that list before "2024" rolls around.

Stephen wrote: "I’ll nominate Among Others by Jo Walton and Jem by Frederik Pohl. (Hope I understood the rules correctly.)"

Among Others is good but I don't think we've read Jem yet, so it'd be eligible any regular month, assuming it fits the theme.

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

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the organization of the shelves.

It's mis-shelved. The inconsistencies on the group bookshelves are what make the Google doc a more reliable list.

There seem to be quite a few books on that shelf with no "date started" or "date finished" information. I wonder if they're all mis-shelved. In any case I'll look for another nominee.

I’ll nominate Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler as a 2nd nominee. (1994 Nebula finalist.)

Stephen wrote: "There seem to be quite a few books on that shelf with no "date started" or "date finished" information. I wonder if they're all mis-shelved. In any case I'll look for another nominee."

Yeah, possibly. One way to also check if a book was accidentally mis-shelved (goodreads I think defaults to "read" status when adding a book to group shelves) is to check the genre and other shelf tags. When we manually move a book from "TBR" to "read", we switch the other shelves too, so something listed as "1960s" will switch to "read-1960s" etc. Any book that says "read" but has a bunch of other shelf tags that are not "read-something" is incorrect one way or the other.

As for myself, I'm gonna go back and nominate books read in the group's first year of existence, 2018, which was before I joined:

The Einstein Intersection by Samuel R. Delany (read Aug. 2018)
The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson (read Dec. 2018)

There are two Read classifications. One of the mods goes in when the month is done to change it from Currently Reading to Read & I think that’s the Read shelf that Stephen referred to. Many of those may be mis-categorized - they were entered before I started working with the shelves. I go in each month and move our classification shelves (SF, decade, type of Sf/f, length, etc) from unread- to read-. I think those are more reliable but they still may not be perfect. Guess I’ll have to review those shelves & match them up to our real list.

Among Others was read in March 2021 and Parable of the Sower in January 2022, according to that Google doc. I read Among Others years ago, so this would be a reread for me. I started Parable of the Sower, found it interesting but didn’t finish it for some reason. I’d like to try again.

The first group read I participated in was The Book of Skulls in November 2021, but I wasn’t a regular participant for a while after that.

Stephen wrote: "Among Others was read in March 2021 and Parable of the Sower in January 2022, ."

Both books are great!

Oleksandr wrote: "Stephen wrote: "Among Others was read in March 2021 and Parable of the Sower in January 2022, ."

Both books are great!"

I agree that both are great books. "Among Others" read by Katherine Kellgren is one the best audio performances I've heard. The accent she used was like music & made the book a real treat to listen to. Sadly, she died of cancer at 42 in 2018, coincidentally at Sloan-Kettering in NYC, where my daughter works.

I'll nominate The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven, which was a January 2019 monthly read. I didn't read it then, but I had read it in college. I'd like to refresh as there's a sequel on my shelf I'd like to read.

SF: Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty
Fantasy: The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold

CJ wrote: "As someone currently battling cancer, "

Best wishes and hopes for you.

CJ wrote: "Allan wrote: "I agree that both are great books. "Among Others" read by Katherine Kellgren is one the best audio performances I've heard. The accent she used was like music & made the book a real t..."

All the best to you, CJ! Definitely listen to it.

I apparently never read The Love We Share Without Knowing, so I will nominate that. The next one I didn't read, or attempt at least, was The Sheep Look Up, apparently. So I will nominate that, as well,

these are both from 2018

Kateblue wrote: "I apparently never read The Love We Share Without Knowing, so I will nominate that. The next one I didn't read, or attempt at least, was The Sheep Look Up, "

I have to warn Kate that I think both books and esp. the latter won't be to your liking

Oleksandr wrote: "I have to warn Kate that I think both books and esp. the latter won't be to your liking..."

That was my first thought too. We can nominate them though unless you want to withdraw them.

Here's what we have so far, including those two:
Among Others by Jo Walton
Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
The Einstein Intersection by Samuel R. Delany
The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson
The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven
Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty
The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold
The Love We Share Without Knowing by Christopher Barzak
The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner

I appreciate you guys telling me I won't like them. But I will leave the two I nominated. You guys have been pulling up my "standards". Besides, I think maybe the John Brunner was not electronic yet and that is why I didn't read it

I was able to find "Sheep" on audio, and I found it was easier to follow that way. It's not the easiest book - I complemented the audio with an online plot guide to be sure I understood what was going on. But I wound up really enjoying it.

If I hate a book that gets selected, I will read the first 20% or so, thinking "why am I doing this," then skip through a few chapters, then skip to about 80% to see what happens. In some books, skipping to 80% works great. Misses all the irrelevant stuff that is so often found in the centers of novels (Snow Queen). Sometimes, though, I'm really lost, and quit, and do not count the book as "read."

It works for me

CJ wrote: "I recently read The Shockwave Rider by Brunner, which I described in a social media post as "Dos Passos, Freud and 1970s technological futurism put in a blender," so I can imagine how ..."

None of the so-called "Club of Rome Quartet" (Stand on Zanzibar, The Sheep Look Up, The Jagged Orbit & The Shockwave Rider) is an easy read. The first three, however, are H/N list & we'll need to read them at some point. My method comes in handy to knock out these difficult ones.

Looks like nominations have wrapped up, shall I make a poll?

Sure, go ahead, I'm tied down today. I would do two identical polls to give each person two votes, but remind not to vote for the same one twice.

Polls are up! There are two polls so that each member can vote twice. Don't vote for the same book twice!

Poll #1
https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/3...

Poll #2
https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/3...

Current standings (polls end Monday):

Parable of the Sower - 13 votes
The Diamond Age - 12 votes
The Mote in God's Eye - 10 votes
Among Others - 7 votes
The Curse of Chalion - 7 votes

I like both leaders

Oleksandr wrote: "I like both leaders"

moi aussi, though I’m not necessarily in the mood for Stephenson at the moment. But that’s supposed to be a good one and I haven’t read it.

Stephen wrote: "Oleksandr wrote: "I like both leaders"

moi aussi, though I’m not necessarily in the mood for Stephenson at the moment. But that’s supposed to be a good one and I haven’t read it."

I've read it twice and will read for a third time :)

If the two current leaders win, I won't read Butler & I'm not likely to read Stephenson either. Both are too recent for me. Whether it wins or not, I plan to re-reading The Mote in God's Eye. It's been 50 years years since I read that one, around the time it came out. I remember Niven & Pournelle came out with Mote, Inferno & Lucifer's Hammer in rapid succession, then Oath of Fealty & Footfall a few years later. I read the first three, & the others have been on my TBR shelf for decades. They wrote a sequel to Mote, The Gripping Hand, in 1993 as well as a few others, spread out.

I also read Mote about 50 years ago, more than once, and also read Inferno and Lucifer’s Hammer. As I recall Mote was easily the best of them, imo. I think I read somewhere that Heinlein advised the authors on editing it. However I’m not interested in revisiting it at this point.

I know I never read Oath, not sure about Footfall.

Niven is one of those authors who will probably be at the bottom of my H/N barrel when I've got through everything that's actually appealing to me. Just no interest at all in his vision of SF.

I'm happy that The Diamond Age is happening though, after missing the Anathem boat last year, *this* time it'll be my first Stephenson book ever.

Kalin wrote: "Niven is one of those authors who will probably be at the bottom of my H/N barrel when I've got through everything that's actually appealing to me. Just no interest at all in his vision of SF.."

Have you tried his short stories, like his series about a detective with 'telekinetic' arm? They were what pushed me to read his novels (which I mostly liked).

No, I don't usually explore an author's oeuvre of short stories unless I already like their novels, since stories are a harder form for me to get into. So I'm not likely to try that either.

Actually, I think Niven is a better short story writer than a novelist

Don’t forget that I add the two polls’ votes together for the ranking.

Kateblue wrote: "Actually, I think Niven is a better short story writer than a novelist"

Agreed

Tied with 18 votes, the winners for April books are:

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson

The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven was a close 3rd with 17 votes. The only other book that reached double-digit votes was The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold.

Allan wrote: "Tied with 18 votes, the winners for April books are:

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer ."

Great!

Gosh, I'm not much of a rereader but it's been long enough that I'm tempted to reread Parable. But I have so many unread on my TBR that I'm going to stick with making my way through those...

This is the first time we've done a group April re-read like this, and I figure we'll make new threads for them? Or should we bump the pre-existing ones?

Either way, if there are group members that aren't interested in these two, I'd still encourage taking this month to catch up on something else from the group that you've been wanting to read and resurrecting those threads for current discussion, especially Mote in God's Eye since so many voted for it and there could be good discussion.

I would say make new threads to keep the chronology going, but include links to the original threads in the opening comment.

Allan wrote: "I would say make new threads to keep the chronology going, but include links to the original threads in the opening comment."


I can do that. I'm usually the one who sets up the monthly discussions, and I can do that

Is the page for the April read of The Diamond Age up? I can’t find it

Andrew wrote: "Is the page for the April read of The Diamond Age up? I can’t find it"

It will be up in a few minutes, sorry

Andrew wrote: "Is the page for the April read of The Diamond Age up? I can’t find it"

Here it is https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Thanks mate. A shared read without the sharing is just a…well it’s just a read innit?

Andrew wrote: "Thanks mate. A shared read without the sharing is just a…well it’s just a read innit?"

I guess so :)