Hugo & Nebula Awards: Best Novels discussion

The topic of "short reads" for December was decided upon in a conversation several months ago. Allan wanted to read 5 short books in December to get his personal goal of 100(?) books this year. (100, right, Allan?) And I want to do short books in December because I figure many of us "Westerners" are more busy in December because of all the holidays. Others agreed.

BUT . . . The first thing that needs to be decided is how many short books. Months ago, Allan said 5, but the a couple of months ago, Annti(?) said he thought only two as usual,

Me, I don't care. So all of you guys, get together and figure out how many. I give you until the 12th. Quick, I know, but this is only the NUMBER of books we will read. Judge your December schedule carefully. And then after we know how many, we will nominate for a week and then vote for a week.

I'm not posting the shelves to pick from yet. I don't want people to start picking books yet.

In fact. I think I will put up a poll so you can vote. Discuss how many in this thread. Maybe you can convince each other, and agree. then vote. Email will go out to all members as fast as I can get this done.

I think two is good, what with everything else going on...

My original thought was a blitz of half a dozen books of 225 pages or less. That's about 20% of the list, so there's little risk of exhausting the shorties. By our bookshelf definitions, it goes up to 300 pages. That's beyond what I envisioned but I'm ok if the group decides on that as a measure. At the higher page count, my 6 might devolve into 4.

I read 103 books last year, averaging 296 pages. I set my goal at 110 this year, but my reading pace has slowed since I got two active rescue dogs, so I'm on pace for about 101. I'd like to at least beat last year. It seems like I've been reading longer books but the average is about the same.

Remember, this is in place of our normal two monthly reads, it's not on top of them!

I support a conservative option of two books, because the month is short and we supposedly will have a birthday challenge and Gibson's neuromancer trilogy to finish as well

I like consistency, so two books as usual is my vote. And to be honest, I usually read only one of the nominees, but on a short book month I'll have time to read both of them.

Not to be argumentative but reading two books as normal defeats the purpose of having a short book month where you can knock several off the list, and it would be roughly half the pages we'd normally do. Of course, it's whatever the group wants, but the thought was to do challenge people and do something a little different than what we normally do. I'm perfectly fine if people don't like the idea, but if we're going for less and not more, we might as well just pick a couple sub-genres and nominate as we normally do.

Sure, reading only two books in short book month is completely against the original idea, and your suggestion is a good one. I simply know that if we have 4 short books, I end up reading only one or two, so it would be hypocritical to vote for more.

I think we have couple of different "types" as members: some read lots of books and/or have committed themselves to read all the H/N nominees. Let's call them "hardcore" members. For them your idea is great!

But then we have "casual" members such as myself, who for lack of time or interest only read one book per month in this group, if that. For me, at least, this group's pacing feels really tight: two books every month plus all the challenges. Since I have lots of other books to read besides this group, I end up reading only one book per month and missing many others. Some of the books seemed worth reading, and I kind of regret not reading them, but c'est la vie.

For us casuals, a month with only two short books would be a chance to finish both monthly reads, so it would preserve the spirit of your suggestion: a chance to knock several (well, two) books in one month off the list.

Perhaps three books could work as a compromise?

Yeah, I get that everyone might not be so focused on scratching books off the list, I was just clarifying my intent. It was just an idea to inject some variety into our choices. We'll see how the poll plays out and just go with that.

Allan wrote: "Not to be argumentative but reading two books as normal defeats the purpose of having a short book month where you can knock several off the list, and it would be roughly half the pages we'd normal..."

True, but shorter reads for the shorter (due to X-mas) month, like average reads for an average month. :)

I am a little (or not that little) addicted to discussing books right now and to have more options I have monthly reads in multiple groups (and some buddy reads/re-reads). Therefore I try not to be overwhelmed, like last month, where several books were not available on audio (due to the my daily schedule I can listen when I cannot read, so audiobooks are a sizable part of my reading) I missed one monthly read in another group

Three sounds as a nice solution, I may support it (note to everyone - you can change your vote)

Sorry, what constitutes as a short book? Novella? Novelette? Novels barely over 40,000 words?

Silvana wrote: "Sorry, what constitutes as a short book? Novella? Novelette? Novels barely over 40,000 words?"

In our group Bookshelf all books, which GR says have 300 pages or less. They are still novels

Also, note, you can do what Annti does and not read them all. Plus, I figure some will have already been read by some of us and might end up being the selection.

I have enough to read, so I really have no opinion.\

But my poll seems to have disappeared. Can anyone find it???

Kateblue wrote: "But my poll seems to have disappeared. Can anyone find it??."

https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/1...

I thought I just sent an email about nominating to everyone, but it didn't send it to me, so I have no way of knowing if it actually went. Anybody get it?

I got it, and I have a question regarding the overall policy of nominating books that are also the first entry in a series? Because of the eligible books I’m considering nominating, three of them fall into that category. Let me know!

I'd assume that since we're going for more books that we can nominate more? I had scoped out several books toward my original idea, but the two I really want to read are:

The Lathe of Heaven - Ursula LeGuin
Mission of Gravity -Hal Clement

Anthony wrote: "I got it, and I have a question regarding the overall policy of nominating books that are also the first entry in a series? Because of the eligible books I’m considering nominating, three of them f..."

If a book is the first in the series and there are several nominated books in that series, it can be nominated but better take a standalone instead because most likely the series will be read as a series in the future by the group.

What if the first book is the only one in the series to be nominated?

Anthony wrote: "What if the first book is the only one in the series to be nominated?"

That is is ok to nominate it

my nominees:
The Accidental Time Machine by Joe Haldeman
Gather, Darkness! by Fritz Leiber

p.s. an interesting side note - a lot of eligible works don't have a audio version - for longer books, even old, this is rare

In that case, I would like to nominate:
Kesrith by C.J. Cherryh
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm

Many of these can be found on the Open Library or epdf.

It's funny how almost all of these short books are at least 40 years old: doesn't anyone know how to write short books anymore?

Anyway, it's traditional in this group to nominate Babel-17 or Dhalgren whenever possible, and then they never win, so:
Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany

Oleksandr wrote: "my nominees:
The Accidental Time Machine by Joe Haldeman
Gather, Darkness! by Fritz Leiber

p.s. an interesting side note - a lot of eligibl..."

The Accidental Time Machine is the one I would be interested in reading as well.
I don't have any other nominees right now.

I'm sorry, but it's not quite clear to me if this is meant as a challenge for December or simply a way to find some books for a group-read (in which I haven't participated thus far).
If it's the latter, then I would join the group-read for the Haldeman book, if it gets the vote.

It's meant to be the group reads for the month, replacing the two books we normally choose. It's separate from the William Gibson and birthday challenges.

Okay. Thanks, Allan! I was a bit confused because we were asked to vote for the number of books we want to read.

I'd like to nominate: Guernica night, the lathe of heaven, have spacesuit will travel and sirens of titan. i know we are going to read three but i couldn't narrow it down anymore lol.

I would like to nominate: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. Thanks, gang :)

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is already one of the two November group reads, so no need to nominate for December!

Yes, David, sorry, I noticed it was there and just knew someone was going to pick it. Please pick another.

And Annti said: . . . almost all of these short books are at least 40 years old: doesn't anyone know how to write short books anymore?

Yes, Annti, people still write them. They are called novellas! :-)

I always wondered about that. So the 40,000 word threshold only applies after the novella category was established? For that matter, all the thresholds?

I am not sure about when and to what the threshold applies or for what year. I know that novels for Hugo could used to be shorter. Now those would be novellas.

I do know this:
Novel 40,000 words or over
Novella 17,500 to 39,999 words
Novelette 7,500 to 17,499 words
Short story under 7,500 words

Maybe there are other definitions. And I have some recollection that different awards may be different. In fact, I am not sure if this is actually the same as the Hugo def, but it looks close

A note or two on novel's size

1. Kate correctly supplied word counts for categories. Only there are +-20% so the committee decides where its belong. e.g. the winner of this year Retro Hugo for novellas is The Little Prince, while it is a bit less that 17.5k words

2. There is clearly a trend for longer novels, supposedly because previously publishers assumed that no one will finish a long book. See award-winning Dune which was 'too large to print' as the trend starter

In my version of the H/N tracking spreadsheet, I've got a chart of average book length by year. There is a near straight-line trend upward from about 200 pages in 1963 to about 450 pages in 1998. It has remained near that same level since, although the variability year to year is much higher, especially in the last decade. The last three years have been closer to 400 pages.

Instead of coming here and nominating, one person sent me nominations in an email See below

from: 102498950 Dave Osmond
to: 76979971 Kateblue
subject: re: [Hugo & Nebula Awards: Best Novels] The poll is done, We will read 3 short books in December
message: I nominate "Flow my Tears, The Policeman Said" by PKD, "The Lathe of Heaven" by LeGuin, and "The Sirens of Titan" by Vonnegut.

Thanks!

dave

Another nomination: Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon

I'm nominating:

Picnic on Paradise by Joanna Russ
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow

I've wanted to start reading both these authors for awhile.

Picnic on Paradise is being re-released in the new Library of America anthology of eight 1960s SF classics edited by Gary K. Wolfe coming out in early November.

All of Cory Doctorow's books can be obtained by free download from his web site:

Craphound.com/down/download

He has some interesting ideas about copyrights & sharing, written in essay form and well worth the reading itself. For my "money", Little Brother was outstanding.

OK, there are so many, and what I am going to do is put up a poll and ask that everyone just vote for one. If this does not give 3 clear winners, I can put up a second poll for a runoff vote

Picnic on Paradise by Joanna Russ
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow
Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon
Flow my Tears, The Policeman Said by PKD
The Sirens of Titan by Vonnegut.
Guernica night
have spacesuit will travel
The Accidental Time Machine by Joe Haldeman
Gather, Darkness! by Fritz Leiber
Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany
Kesrith by C.J. Cherryh
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm
The Lathe of Heaven - Ursula LeGuin
Mission of Gravity -Hal Clement

The poll isn’t showing up on the group polls page, but I found it through the invitation you sent. Can someone post a proper link to it? And/or get it on our polls page?

Anthony wrote: "The poll isn’t showing up on the group polls page, but I found it through the invitation you sent. Can someone post a proper link to it? And/or get it on our polls page?"

https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/1...

Z, it is on the group polls page, but it is number 31 or 32. It shows up on the second page. I cannot figure out how to get it to be on the first page even though other polls--up until last month--have automatically gone to the top.

Go here https://www.goodreads.com/poll/list/4...

There's a way to put the newest first and I told it to, but it is ignoring me. Also, I checked the box to show it on the group page, and it ignored that, too.

Sorry

I corrected it, now it is first on poll's list

Well, tell me how to correct it, please!

Kateblue wrote: "Well, tell me how to correct it, please!"

There is a box to check when you create/edit a poll "Feature this poll on the group homepage"

I did check that box, I thought!!!!???? I'll try again next time. Gotta go.

Haha, it is not looking good for me, I've read the top 3 in the voting so far. I guess I'll have to slip down to the next 3, but of course I would comment.

And since this whole idea was, in large part, due to you, you should comment!

Posting this in anticipation of our Babel-17 monthly read: https://www.tor.com/2019/11/12/langua...

As a linguist, I'm excited to read some SF where language features heavily.