Hugo & Nebula Awards: Best Novels discussion

April is the month we've chosen to re-read two books that the group has read before. The group has read nearly 200 books since its inception in 2018, so there's decent list to choose from.

Books will be on any of the shelves labeled as "Read", with a few restrictions:
- Must be a Hugo or Nebula nominee
- Must not be a book from the last 5 years (2021-2025).
- It may be the first of a series, but not a later book in the series

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

The Man Who Folded Himself. Short, sweet and fun. And I am not sure that I read it with the group the last time.

Too bad I forgot I we were doing this because I just reread Memory because I love it so. But I will read it again. And yes, it is not #1 in a series, but all of Bujold's Vorkosigan books can stand alone. I will probably start about a quarter of the way in, though. That's when I think it really starts getting good. And if you want to eliminate it because it is not #1, feel free to.

I nominate The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke. I read this in the early 1980s and was surprised how good it was, for some reason. I must have been underrating Clarke. I still have the old paperback but I have never reread it.

Cyteen by C.J. Cherryh, I've long meant to read it.

The Accidental Time Machine by Joe Haldeman, my last book on the list by him to read, the group first read it in 2020.

I do have a question. With the exception of Lala, I do not see any new members nominating here. But I thought we initially started doing this so that the new members could read some of the ones they had missed--because they didn't join back when this group formed back in 2018. But if there are no new people, then we should read whatever the new people want to read.

So if no new people come and nominate, we should just let Lala say what we are reading

I’m not a mod, and I’m not familiar with the reasoning behind this theme, but for what it’s worth it strikes me as a bad idea to change the rules in the middle of the nomination process.

Kateblue wrote: "I do have a question. With the exception of Lala, I do not see any new members nominating here. But I thought we initially started doing this so that the new members could read some of the ones the..."

I nominated a book I missed when it came around. It is not a re-read for me.

Kateblue wrote: "I do have a question. With the exception of Lala, I do not see any new members nominating here. But I thought we initially started doing this so that the new members could read some of the ones the..."

I'm not looking to take over by any means, so please don't change for me! I'm only following the group reading loosely when a book is easily available to me and appeals. I just finished Little Brother from back in September and have no plans to read Helliconia at all...

Stephen wrote: "I’m not a mod, and I’m not familiar with the reasoning behind this theme, but for what it’s worth it strikes me as a bad idea to change the rules in the middle of the nomination process."

Agree. But it's an issue. I think. And it doesn't matter if you are a mod or not. It is your group, also.

I do not agree that there is an issue here.

sadly I have never read do androids dream of electric sheep. I will nominate that

We don't see them nominating often, but we don't know if they are reading or not. I've been sending out the nomination and poll threads as blasts to all members. I agree that we don't change the process in the middle.

I'm going to add Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer to the list. I want to re-read it & finish the trilogy.

That gives us six, including the nominees below. We'll select two of them, I'll put the poll up now.

The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold
The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke
Cyteen by C.J. Cherryh
The Accidental Time Machine by Joe Haldeman
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

Polls are up! Here are the links:

https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/3...

https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/3...

The winners of the poll are a couple of classics:

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, 1969 Nebula nominee

The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke, 1980 Hugo & Nebula winner

Well, I have read both of those, so I probably will not read again.

I read Androids just about a year ago, so won’t reread again. I nominated Fountains and am looking forward to the group read.

I've read both, but maybe will re-read Dick...

I still have a whole stack of catch-ups from past group reads, so I will probably tackle one or two of those instead.

I hope there are active group members who want to read these books. I think the April re-read month might suffer from a perpetual popularity contest situation if the full group of hundreds of members is invited to vote, when >90% of the group isn't reading our monthly picks. Maybe we'll want to consider a more limited voting invite next year and see if that changes our results.

I read all our monthly reads in time and the two scheduled for reread weren't my favorites, but I now think that rereading important books, even if I don't love them, is a nice way to find what others love about them.