Hugo & Nebula Awards: Best Novels discussion

I am starting this thread now because:
1) I need to remember what I am thinking now . . . and
2) Allan's just gonna put it up soon anyway

Most years, I'm just trying to read

*150 books in the annual GR challenge,

*anything for Hot Off the Presses group that I don't hate the first chapters of

*100 books in the McHalo group's TBR challenge, which makes you read books either that you have, or that you have on a list before the end of the previous year, but you must NEVER have read them before. This includes the list here, because I will have them on a list before the end of this year.

*any books I have to read RIGHT NOW in continuing series (I'm behind for a couple) or in my author worship: John Sandford, J.D. Robb, Lois McMaster Bujold, Jasper Fforde, Lev Grossman, Ilona Andrews, and more recently, T. Kingfisher

HOWEVER, I am going to list certain things this year so I don't forget

I'm reducing the McHalo TBR to 75 because:
1) I have some books I love that I want to reread, but I never do mostly because TMBTLT
+ Fredrik Brown Multipacks for the Orbit Group
and
2) I've got lots of books/series I want to read that I never get around to reading. So far, 2 are cemented in . . .
a) The Laundry Files, which I have brilliantly conned many of you into reading with me, and
b) Bordertown, which is mostly collected short stories plus three novels. I just bought a REAL book of some of the stories as it has never been released as an ebook (so you know I'm cemented in now!)

2) and 3) will count towards the TBR list, but I'm not expecting as many as usual considering number 1) above

Whew!

I just got a new T. Kingfisher novella from the library, What Stalks the Deep

Stephen wrote: "I just got a new T. Kingfisher novella from the library, What Stalks the Deep"

There's a buddy read going on right now here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Ha, you beat me to the punch! Last time I put it up in early January. My goals won't be all that different, quantity-wise, but I'll have to figure out what series, challenges, etc. I'll want to do.

Also, there are some authors that I want to read/catch up but no time.

*Seanan McGuire a/k/a Mira Grant
*Tom Holt whom I have just found out is also K.J. Parker

Others that I cannot think of now.

It just seems that I am often reading stuff and thinking that I want it to be over so I can read something else. I am hoping that with these authors and the series above, I can stop feeling like that

Not too different from my 2025 goals:

Total page count/Total books
35,000 pages, around 110 books; modest increase?

Monthly group books
1) Keep up with the group
2) Try to complete the monthly books I haven't read
3) Read Evolution & New Releases as I can or want to.

Series
1) Finish Harry Potter (Deathly Hallows)
2) Participate in the Group series reads: The Laundry Files, Helliconia
3) Finish started series: Mars - Robinson; Dorsai - Dickson; Crown of Stars - Elliott; Space - Lewis; World of the Five Gods - Bujold; Alvin Maker - Card; Machineries of Empire - Lee; The Locked Tomb - Muir; The Vineart War - Gilman; others?

Miscellaneous
1) Reach 75% of the H/N list - will need to read about 33 H/N.
2) Read the 6 H/N winners I haven't read yet.
3) Read more collections & anthologies!
4) Read 12 biography, non-fiction or history books.
5) Clear at least 40 physical books from my shelves, net of buys.
6) Worlds Without End challenges as specified on that site.

I’ll wait a couple more months before addressing this.

Stephen wrote: "I’ll wait a couple more months before addressing this."

Me too

Stephen wrote: "I’ll wait a couple more months before addressing this."

Me three

Allan wrote: "4) Finish various series: Mars - Robinson; Dorsai - Dickson; Crown of Stars - Elliott; Space - Lewis; World of the Five Gods - Bujold; Alvin Maker - Card; Machineries of Empire - Lee; The Locked Tomb - Muir; others?"

Well let's nominate Mars Trilogy and Machineres of Empire for our series reading! I'd be excited to read both this coming year.

Good idea! I've read the first two of each series, and I know you are in a similar position. I waver about rereading Red and Green Mars, but I probably would reread the Machineries books, as I don't recall those as well.

Red & Green are too big a commitment for me to reread anytime soon, even though I loved them both. But I would comment in a thread (as much or as little as I usually do anyway...)

I haven't read any Yoon Ha Lee yet, so I'd be reading all three.

I read the Mars trilogy in 2017 and loved it. However I tried a reread of Red Mars a couple of years ago and found it was too soon, so I probably wouldn’t want to participate. I also read the Yoon Ha Lee books as they came out; not a huge fan though they are fine in their way.

Red Mars made a huge impression on me & really stuck in my memory. Green Mars didn't stick as much but I remember it generally. I'd be content to just read a plot summary to refresh my memory before taking on Blue Mars. I just haven't got there.

One other I left off was The Uplift War. I've read the first two books of the trilogy but like Mars haven't finished it off. Another one that requires a commitment to read.

I think I'm going to have to bite the bullet one year and just devote it to killing off some of the doorstops. Maybe that should be my 2026 goal - the Doorstop Challenge. I have 13 unread H/N books of 600 pages or more. Hey, I'm going to create that in Worlds Without End!

I read the first book of the Uplift War, Sundiver, and started the second, but life intervened. I think. I may have finished it. I remember something that might be it. (view spoiler)[ there was a book where people were chasing somebody across the Mexican desert, maybe? I only have bits and pieces. Could it have been Uplift #2? (hide spoiler)]

I want to read Uplift, but I want to read Heechee more. I really liked the first one, Gateway, when we read it recently. So I will throw that series into the hat.

Kateblue wrote: "I read the first book of the Uplift War, Sundiver, and started the second, but life intervened. I think. I may have finished it. I remember something that might be it. [spoilers remove..."

I'm reading the 2nd book now, [book:Beyond the Blue Event Horizon|373399].

So many goals, so little time

for 2026 on top of everyrhing else, i commit to 12 H/N monthly reads.

working towards life goal: read all H/N best novels awards

Okay, I'm reading to share my goals. A separate goal from reading is I plan to study/learn a language extensively throughout 2026, so I'm lowering my monthly page count / annual books read count goals. I aim to NOT exceed 1800 pages a month (so 21,600 pages for the year), and my goal for the year is 77 books.

Starting in January I'm running and hosting the Aurora Awards Retrospective Book Club with CSFFA, so I will be reading one Aurora Award winner each month, but I'm skipping 2, so that's 10 books.

I also plan to continue reading through the Hugo/Nebula list and I aim for two books a month, for a total of 24 H/N reads. Two of them are included in Aurora list.

I want to read one nonfiction book per month, so 12 for the year.

I want to read two new SFF releases each month, though typically I get carried away in the leadup to award voting season (Hugos and Auroras) so I will probably overshoot this. 24 for the year.

And lastly, buddy reads as scheduled, including The Laundry Files buddy read happening here.

That Aurora Awards book club sounds interesting. How can I find out more about it?

Stephen, I would love for you to join!

You can find more information here: https://www.csffa.ca/book-club/

I'm hosting it on Discord, the link to the CSFFA community server is here: https://discord.gg/kvZshxwRWq

We're doing monthly novel reads, plus I'm organizing monthly(-ish) online book club meetings with guest speakers/authors.

Thanks, I’ll check it out.

I am going to continue pursuing a balanced mix of Nobel Laureates' books, interesting historical pieces across centuries, low key expansion across the Globe (like, say Orhan Pamuk and Laslo Krasnohorkaj serve both, geo coverage and nobel), weird fiction (I will attempt to keep up with the Weird Fiction group), and fantasy and sci fi. and whatever else happens. I still have half of the Witcher books and several of the Dark Tower unfinished, and two more Vita Nostra. After that Becky Chambers book, I am not sure if I will continue to be reading the Nebula awarded books; I'll see. I also wanted to do a deep dive into Goethe's Faustus. I was thinking of taking the original poem with Google translate (my German is not great), and read alongside the new translation by Mike Smith that I got, and say, Pasternak's and Kholodkovsky in Russian. and just go chapter by chapter. This might or might not happen....

That reminds me - I still have two books in the Witcher series to complete.

Allan wrote: "That reminds me - I still have two books in the Witcher series to complete."
I also have the Blue Mars sitting in my Audible queue since at least 2015 - but honestly, somehow I never quite truly liked the Mars series. Something about more or less all the characters and how they interacted grated on me a bit from the start; so I will *at some point* probably listen to it on Audible, but currently, the line there is almost 80 books >_> and it's defiinitely toward the end of that line.
The Witcher though was 1 credit for the whole thing - I wish other series came like that!
I started something without really knowing what it was but just vaguely remembering that it was highly recommended to me by a good friend Nothing to See Here and it is getting to be probably lots of fun even though the beginning low-key outraged me as basically the rich people were totally screwing over this girl and nobody seemed to care. I am not sure this qualifies as fantasy; but it does feature (view spoiler)[ kids who burst into flames when they are upset (hide spoiler)].

Zina wrote: "I also have the Blue Mars sitting in my Audible queue since at least 2015 - but honestly, somehow I never ..."

I plan to read Blue Mars next year to finish out the series, and I think Kalin may join me, as he is in the same spot.

Expanding on series. Note: all but The Witcher have H/N books as part of the series.

Group Reads
The Laundry Files
Helliconia

Priority - need a book or two to finish:
1) Harry Potter - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
2) Mars - Blue Mars
3) Space - That Hideous Strength
4) The Witcher - The Lady of the Lake, Season of Storms
5) Five Gods - The Hallowed Hunt
6) Machineries of Empire - Revenant Gun
7) Oxford Time Travel - Blackout/All Clear
8) Uplift Saga - The Uplift War, Brightness Reef

Low priority, started & want to make progress
1) Dorsai - read 1/4
2) Crown of Stars - 1/7
3) Alvin Maker - 3/6
4) The Vineart War 1/3
5) Alex Benedict 3/8
6) The Academy 3/8
7) The Locked Tomb 1/3
8) Metropolitan 1/2
9) Marid Audran 1/3

Allan wrote: "4) The Witcher - The Lady of the Lake, Season of Storms"

A new one came out this fall you probably haven't read yet.

Kalin wrote: "A new one came out this fall you probably haven't read yet."

I read it a couple weeks ago, grabbed it quickly from my library & it was relatively short. Thanks though.

I want to remain vague and uncommitted about my reading, to some extent at least, but I do have plans.

I have another list of 20 TBR books, devised for a challenge in another group, all physical books currently on my shelves. Some of these are Hugo/Nebula nominees. Related specifically to this group’s reading challenges etc. on the list are Citizen of the Galaxy, the only Heinlein juvenile I haven’t reread in the last few years, and The Urth of the New Sun. Continuing with my interest in the works of PKD and KSR, The Game-Players of Titan and The Years of Rice and Salt are also on the list.

I’ll continue with the Heinlein juveniles challenge in this group, though probably not rereading all of them.

I’ve reached the 365 pieces of short fiction goal for 2025, many of which were discussed in the ORBIT group. It was a great year for reading genre short stories for me and I’ll hope to continue at the story per day pace.

I’ll continue participating in this group’s monthly reads. I should have copies of all 3 volumes of the Helliconia series in time to read them in the coming months. Also the Evolution and Hot from the Printers groups.

Other than that I have a few other genre books on the shelves that I want to get to soon: Norstrilia and Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century: Volume 1 (1907-1948): Learning Curve for two.

My plans are roughly the same as this year, bearing in mind that I underperformed on a few of them.
0. total of 180 books, for the last 3 years, I guess, I end up with above this figure. I don't want to increase it; otherwise, it is quantity over quality.
1. 40 non-fics - this year about 20, I clearly need to read one every two weeks or so
2. 40 Ukrainian books of novella+ size - again around 20, the same as #1
3. All Polish SFF award nominees. - done last three years, plan to keep
4. weekly Economist magazine (doesn't count to any other goal, GR doesn't want non-fiction magazines here) - same
5. All monthly reads and challenges - same
6. All 2026 issues of Analog and Asimov's SF magazines - for 2025 this goal is only 1/2 done, maybe I will manage two more by the year's end

365 pieces of short fiction in a year sounds like fun, actually. I would tackle that (and I just finally joined ORBIT) but I don't foresee myself having time. Still, I have 60+ short story collections and dozens of anthologies on my TBR and I tend not to be great at prioritizing them.

Kalin wrote: "365 pieces of short fiction in a year sounds like fun, actually. I would tackle that (and I just finally joined ORBIT) but I don't foresee myself having time. Still, I have 60+ short story collecti..."

I'm in exactly the same boat. I tried keeping up with the H/N short story challenge, to no avail. I can have a really hard time just finding room to sit and read (print or online). Over the past year, I've collected a number of the "best of" anthologies & author collections, and I'd really like to get through them. Guess I just have to prioritize. Maybe one per month?

Re: the H/N short story challenge, because I guess most members who wish to participate are here - a question. Should I make it more official? Like reading one year per month - go 10 years from 1960 to 1969, with 2 more months to catch up. Note that when Nebula started nominating, in 1966 there were 31 short stories! I guess there are H/N nominees among them but still - it is a story per day for a month. Later, already in 1967 only 3 nominees and 5 in 1968...

Oleksandr wrote: "Re: the H/N short story challenge, because I guess most members who wish to participate are here - a question. Should I make it more official? Like reading one year per month - go 10 years from 196..."

I think it would be good to come up with some such more or less formal schedule.

Prior to the arrival of the Nebulas there would be 5 stories each year, I believe, but this included longer stories like novelettes and novellas. Then in the second half of the 1960s we get the Nebulas, and the Novelette and Novella categories appear for the Hugos. Personally I think I would prefer to stick with the Short Story category for our reading at this time.

If we are going to cover the decade in 10 months, with 2 more months to catch up, it might make sense to try to even up the amount of reading per month, i.e. not just do January=1960, February=1961, etc.

I already set my reading goals for the year, but I didn't write them down anywhere :) So here they are:

1) Read (at least 1 page of a book) every day
2) Finish 12 books in the year (already way ahead!)
3) Ensure I read more physical books than I acquire (my shelf is pretty full...)
4) Participate in at least 1 group read

Update

Total page count/Total books
35,000 pages, around 110 books; modest increase?
Running ahead, projecting 40,527 at current rate

Monthly group books
1) Keep up with the group - Behind on Helliconia, but will complete
2) Try to complete the monthly books I haven't read - No progress
3) Read Evolution & New Releases as I can or want to.

Series
1) Finish Harry Potter (Deathly Hallows)
2) Participate in the Group series reads: The Laundry Files, Helliconia - Going well
3) Finish started series: Mars - Robinson; Dorsai - Dickson; Crown of Stars - Elliott; Space - Lewis; World of the Five Gods - Bujold; Alvin Maker - Card; Machineries of Empire - Lee; The Locked Tomb - Muir; The Vineart War - Gilman; others?
- On target for Blue Mars in June

Miscellaneous
1) Reach 75% of the H/N list - will need to read about 40 H/N. - Behind, lots of books but few H/N novels
2) Read the 6 H/N winners I haven't read yet.
- Read 2 with a 3rd in progress
3) Read more collections & anthologies! - 1 read
4) Read 12 biography, non-fiction or history books. - 2 read
5) Clear at least 40 physical books from my shelves, net of buys. - 6 so far, on target
6) Worlds Without End challenges as specified on that site.
- On target

Allan wrote: "3) Finish started series: . . . World of the Five Gods - Bujold; ."

Allan, if you are interested, some of us are starting to read the Penric novellas together this month. Go here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Kateblue wrote: "Allan wrote: "3) Finish started series: . . . World of the Five Gods - Bujold; ."

Allan, if you are interested, some of us are starting to read the Penric novellas together this month. Go here: ht..."

I have access to these through my library. I'll try to join & keep up. Thanks!

Allan wrote: "I have access to these through my library. I'll try to join & keep up. Thanks

You will need to join the group, but we have a lot of fun. Ask Oleksandr . . .

I asked to join

And I approved you. (I because a moderator because Shrimpy (Sarah, actually) was way busy and all the other moderators had disappeared. But she still does most of it.)