Hugo & Nebula Awards: Best Novels discussion

We need to establish the monthly reading themes for 2023. Opening this up to the group for critique and new ideas. For reference, below is a list of the themes for each month back to the group's start. We don't have to stick to these, we can use any shelf or any category you can come up with that has 15 or so books in it.

January
2019: Long & Short
2020: Hard SF & Fantasy
2021: Very Short & Re-Reads/Make-Ups
2022: Post-2000's & Mini-Series 1
2023: Old (30s-50s) & New (00s-10s)

February
2019: Time Travel & Retro
2020: Apocalypse & Humor
2021: Mini-Series
2022: Dark/Urban Fantasy & Mini-Series 2
2023: One-Hit Wonders & Alt-History

March
2019: Women
2020: Women
2021: Women
2022: Women, SF & Fantasy
2023: Women, SF & Fantasy (also Trilogy 1)

April
2018: Fantasy & Steampunk
2019: Light SF & Humor
2020: Artificial Intelligence & Alien Invasion
2021: 90's & Fantasy
2022: No books, catch-up month
2023: No books, catch-up month

May
2018: New Releases & 70's
2019: Anticipating & Dreading
2020: Steampunk & Cyberpunk
2021: Mini-Series
2022: Humorous & Steampunk
2023: Trilogy 2 & Hard SF

June
2018: Dystopia & Space Opera
2019: Hugo-Nominated & Nebula-Nominated
2020: 70's & 90's
2021: Retro Hugo & Hard SF
2022: 80's & Retro Hugos
2023: Trilogy 3 & Debuts

July
2018: Mini-Series
2019: Hard SF & Fantasy
2020: Alt-History & Time Travel
2021: Anticipating & Dreading
2022: Time Travel & High Fantasy
2023: Adapted to Screen & Finish A Year/Author

August
2018: 00's & Alt-History & Shorts (added for page count)
2019: Extremely Long
2020: Eco-Fiction & Retro Hugo
2021: Very Long Reads
2022: Alien Invasion & One-Hit Wonders
2023: Extremely/Very Long (1 book)

September
2018: Dystopia & Space Opera & Shorts (added for page count)
2019: Close Calls & Bad Losers
2020: 30's-70's & 80's-10's
2021: 70's
2022: Anticipating & Dreading
2023: Multiple Awards & Newly Eligible (2018)

October
2018: Scary (series)
2019: Scary
2020: Scary
2021: Scary
2022: Apocalyptic & Birth Year
2023: Anticipating & Dreading

November
2018: Scary (series) & First Contact
2019: 60's & Space Opera
2020: Hugo Winners & Nebula Winners
2021: Close Calls & Big Losers
2022: Close Calls & Big Losers
2023: Close Calls & Big Losers

December
2019: Shorts (3)
2020: Close Calls & Big Losers
2021: Shorts (3)
2022: Shorts (3)
2023: Shorts (3)

January - Old & New (say 1930-50 and 2000+)
February - One-Hit Wonders & ?
March - Women + ?
April - Alt-hist + ?
May Hard SF +?
June
July
August
September
October
November
December - Close Calls & Big Losers

From our shelves it seems the largest shelves are
Sf - 157
One-Hit Wonders 124
miniSeries 104
Women 100

I think one-hit wonders was an excellent theme last year.

I also liked doing a miniseries/duology over two months.

I think 'scary/horror' as its own theme is done. The list isn't long enough to support a vibrant nomination process.

I'd like to suggest a "newly eligible" theme: since we've now blocked new releases going back five years, each new year we'll have a slate of books now available to nominate. This coming year it'll be 2018. For this theme we wouldn't accept nominations, but put up all the books unread by the group from 2018 and vote from among them.

It would include: Amberlough, The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter, Spoonbenders, Provenance, Autonomous. (The Stone Sky & Raven Stratagem could be but they are #3 and #2 in their respective trilogies).

Oleksandr wrote: "From our shelves it seems the largest shelves are
Sf - 157
One-Hit Wonders 124
miniSeries 104
Women 100"

I know the count on One-Hit Wonders is accurate, but the Women shelf seems low. Ditto for SF.

Each of the decades has about 50 books, that may also be fertile ground for one of two of the 24 themes.

People seemed to like the Catch-Up month. Do we need to do that again?

Totally agree on horror. Not enough books in that category.

This is the list of alternative themes posted a few months ago. We established the "One-Hit Wonders" shelf out of this.

* Books with ugly covers (this is almost a halloween theme)
* Books with beautiful covers
* Adapted-to-screen
* Alternate history
* Books with numbers in the title
* Books with colours in the title
* One-word titles
* Books that have also been nominated for other awards (anything goes)
* Mystery book / vote from a random selection
* Mod's choice
* Your partner/dog/friend/whatever picks your nomination
* Debut novels
* Children's books / YA books
* Philosophical (tagged for 'philosophy')

I for one like the random selection suggestion from Kalin. He can use a random generator to pick a book from each decade to form a list of nominees we can vote on.

I'd love to give these a shot:

* Adapted-to-screen
* Debut novels
* Books that have also been nominated for other awards (anything goes)
* Philosophical (tagged for 'philosophy')

But it would require some shelf building I think...


This isn't really compatible with our list: * Children's books / YA books

I think it's high time for us to tackle some trilogies, the same way we did duologies this year (one book of the series for three consecutive months).

We could also do the Extremely Long month, since those books cause some trouble if they are voted on a "normal" month.

"Anticipating & Dreading" could be the October theme - the Dreading part would kinda fit in the Halloween theme.

So if I combine these with Oleksandrs list + other suggestions made in this thread:

Jan - Old & Newly eligible
Feb - One-Hit Wonders & Random
Mar - Women (2)
Apr - Catch-up & Alt-Hist
May - Trilogies 1 & Hard SF
Jun - Trilogies 2 & Debut novels
Jul - Trilogies 3 & Adapted to screen
Aug - Extremely Long
Sep - Other Awards & ?
Oct - Anticipating & Dreading
Nov - Philosophical & ?
Dec - Close Calls & Biggest Losers

Antti beat me to the punch, I was just about to put out my suggestions, but here they are anyway:

JAN - New 00s+ & Mini-Series 1
FEB - Old 30s-50s & Mini-Series 2
MAR - Women SF & Women Fantasy
APR - Newly Eligible (2018) & One-Hit Wonders
MAY - Alt-History & Hard SF
JUN - Adapted to Screen & Debuts
JUL - Multiple Award Nominees SF & Fantasy
AUG-NOV - TBD
DEC - Close Calls & Big Losers

I would eliminated Catch-Up for 2023. I think a full month of rest from all books is warranted, but every other year feels right.

I do like Antti's trilogy suggestion, since there are more of them than there is of duologies. I really enjoyed doing that the first of the year though. But three months doesn't work with keeping the March Women themes going, so May-Jun start is ok.

Multiple award nominees can be its own month if we choose an SF and a Fantasy.

New shelves would be required for Adapted to Screen, Debuts & Multiple Award Winners, so we need some time to build them. I think that the latter category would be huge, so I would limit it by saying 3 or more award nominations. Philosophical might be a difficult one to define, but I think we could do it. It might tend toward books that have a religious theme.

I've come into possession of a good handful of books recently that the group has already read so I'm always in favour of a catch-up month.

I have read all of this, it's all ok with me, and my only comment is that December is usually short books, not Close Calls & Big Losers

Kateblue wrote: "I have read all of this, it's all ok with me, and my only comment is that December is usually short books, not Close Calls & Big Losers"

Short Books was an idea I pushed, but I thought that after two years of it, it might be good to swap it out for another theme. I'm certainly open to keeping it if there's a strong preference for it. How do you others feel about it?

I like the short books month.

Here's a revised proposal that incorporates the earlier suggestions:

JAN - Old 30s-50s & New 00s+
FEB - One-Hit Wonders & Alt-History
MAR - Women SF & Women Fantasy
APR - Catch-Up Month
MAY - Hard SF & Trilogy 1
JUN - Debuts & Trilogy 2
JUL - Adapted to Screen & Trilogy 3
AUG - Extremely/Very Long (1 book)
SEP - Multiple Awards & Newly Eligible (2018)
OCT - Anticipating & Dreading
NOV - Close Calls & Big Losers
DEC - Short Books (3)

Looks great!

Here's a thought that your other post prompted, Kalin: what if we did the Oxford Time Travel series as the trilogy, pushing it back a month, finishing with Blackout/All Clear as the Extremely Long book in August? That would allow us to pull in another theme in May.

I'm open to that but we'd be circumventing the voting process.

I'm good with that. Sounds like a great idea! Everybody? What do you think

I'm perfectly fine if we circumvent the voting process once as an experiment to see whether it affects monthly discussions at all

Whatever you guys decide is fine with me. This group reads lots of good books. I should perhaps note that I didn’t get very far in Blackout/All Clear when I started it, around the time of its Hugo year, and I have no intention of trying it again.

I've been slowly checking over some of the shelves & revising as I can. For example, the Women shelves are way off, but I've gone through the list and identified what they should be. That's just an ongoing project to keep them straight.

But noting the 2023 themes above, we have three new shelves that need to be built:
Debuts
Adapted-to-Screen
Multiple Awards

I have a handle on the latter, for which I can use Worlds Without End. Since many of the 611 books qualified for other awards, we'll need to limit it to nominees of 2-3-4 or more awards. I'll just have to get a count for each, then manage the list based on # of award nominations.

WWE also has a "Genre-Lit Flicks", which is a limited list of adaptations. I looked yesterday & there are some H/N books listed, although it's not complete by any means. I could use some help with this one, so I'm going to start a thread with my list & others can add to it.

Debuts I do not have a handle on at all, so I do need some help with the research on this one. I'll start a thread for building a list though, and if others will post there, we can build it up.

I'm happy to help with the shelf-building research. I'll start with debuts.

For "multiple awards" category -- I'd be curious to see how many on our H/N list won one or more other awards, and if there would be a plentiful enough list just to run with winners, rather than nominees.

I posted new threads under "Games" to see who can come up with the greatest number of entries for the Debut and Adaptations lists.

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Kalin wrote: "I'm happy to help with the shelf-building research. I'll start with debuts.

For "multiple awards" category -- I'd be curious to see how many on our H/N list won one or more other awards, and if th..."

WWE shows winners & nominees for 29 different awards. It shouldn't be difficult to get a count on that basis, but if we want to limit it to fewer, particular awards, it will take some work. I have an idea on how to do it systematically though.

Allan wrote: "I posted new threads under "Games" to see who can come up with the greatest number of entries for the Debut and Adaptations lists..."

These lists are a great help for the process

Another theme I think could be cool: finish-a-year or finish-an-author

Everyone can nominate a book that is the last book they need to scratch off a full year of the list, or alternatively, a book that would mean they've read all of an author's nominated works. Limited to authors with more than one total H/N nomination.

Kalin wrote: "Another theme I think could be cool: finish-a-year or finish-an-author"

A nice idea!

Oleksandr wrote: "Kalin wrote: "Another theme I think could be cool: finish-a-year or finish-an-author"

A nice idea!"

Or finish a series

BTW my retina screen on my apple laptop is failing so I may be suddenly absent for a few days soon. And I hate using my phone for stuff . . .

Kalin wrote: "Another theme I think could be cool: finish-a-year or finish-an-author

Everyone can nominate a book that is the last book they need to scratch off a full year of the list, or alternatively, a book..."

Agreed, this would be a good theme and would not require any new shelves to be created. Coincidentally, I noticed that this year I've read 4 of the 5 books I hadn't read for 2017.

Kalin wrote: "For "multiple awards" category -- I'd be curious to see how many on our H/N list won one or more other awards, and if th..."

I've completed a giant table of the awards won for all 611 H/N books. I'll put it out on the google drive in the next day or two. I used Worlds Without End, which has lists of 29 different awards. Some awards are very specific (so not many qualify) or very obscure (has anyone heard of this?). Awards proliferated in the mid-70's & again after 2008.

I can use this data to come up with just about any combination you can think of (i.e. HN books that were also nominated for a Locus), but I've created a shelf for books with 5 or more nominations called "Multiple Awards". I chose that number because it results in a list of 56 books, a reasonable number for a theme shelf. Some we've read, some are part of a series, but I'm including them and members can edit themselves if they want to nominate something. I postulated that the books with high awards would be a pretty exclusive list of the classics, but it didn't turn out as skewed as I thought. Check the Games thread for more.

Kalin wrote: "Another theme I think could be cool: finish-a-year or finish-an-author."

I don't know if we'll end up using this theme any time soon, but I created a spreadsheet to track an individual's (my) progress reading specific authors from our H/N list. I added a blank version to the group google drive, here's a link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...

Currently the list is organized by total number of nominations, but you can use the sort sheet function under "Data" to rearrange alphabetically or by percentage you've completed.

Kalin wrote: "Kalin wrote: "Another theme I think could be cool: finish-a-year or finish-an-author."

I don't know if we'll end up using this theme any time soon, but I created a spreadsheet to track an individu..."

I haven't put a new version out there in a while, but my spreadsheet has a "Sorts" page, which has all the books listed (1) alphabetically by title; (2) alphabetically by author; (3) from low to high by page count. Next to the author list is a table showing total nominations, wins & how many I've read. It's very useful if I don't want to scan the main table to find a book. I'm sure it wouldn't be useful to non-nerdy readers, but that's where I get a lot of my stats from.

Good work, you guys

Allan wrote: "

JAN - Old 30s-50s & New 00s+
FEB - One-Hit Wonders & Alt-History
MAR - Women SF & Women Fantasy
APR - Catch-Up Month
MAY - Hard SF & Trilogy 1
JUN - Debuts & Trilogy 2
JUL - Adapted to Screen & Trilogy 3
AUG - Extremely/Very Long (1 book)
SEP - Multiple Awards & Newly Eligible (2018)
OCT - Anticipating & Dreading
NOV - Close Calls & Big Losers
DEC - Short Books (3)"

I noticed that the trilogy months are actually one in advance of possibly using August as a Blackout/All Clear month. (may/june/july instead of june/july/aug). So I propose that if Connie Willis wins, we turn Trilogy 3 into "complete a year/author" for the other MR in July.

Kalin wrote: "Allan wrote: "

MAY - Hard SF & Trilogy 1
JUN - Debuts & Trilogy 2
JUL - Adapted..."

Yes, I left it as May/Jun/Jul while we debated the topic, but I'm completely open to your suggestion. We would've had to adjust anyway and this helps solidify that plan. If you would, please re-post the updated plan here, so that the most recent message has the complete list. Just easier to find it that way (although nerdy me has it on the spreadsheet).

By the way, thanks for picking up the nominations & polls for me this month. I've been distracted the last couple of weeks as we had a tragic death in the family the week before Thanksgiving.

Allan wrote: ""

My sincere condolences, Allan

Thank you, Acorn!

So sad for you, Allan. Thanks for being around in spite of your loss

I'm sorry too. Don't worry about mod tasks, I'll try to pick up whatever ones I can.

So sorry to hear that Allan, I hope you and your family are able to be together and heal. The holidays are so tough when they coincide with tragedy.

I’ve had a similar experience and it’s hard, but by no means impossible to find joy in the holidays again. Reading was a big crutch of mine throughout recovery and I’m thankful there are so many worlds to escape into and forget about real life pain for a while.

Thank you all for the kind words. I'm doing ok; my wife spent the week in Houston with her sister, which was great consolation to her.
He was able to become an organ donor and saved five people we know of, so at least there was some good that came out of it. Also, the timing was such that the whole family could be together for Thanksgiving, which provided a really good, intimate opportunity for catharsis. Not that it will be easy going forward for my sister-in-law, but she knows we're all there to help her.

Since the Inheritance trilogy changes our schedule by opening a spot for a new theme in July, I suggest we use Kalin's suggestion of "finish-a-year" or "finish-an-author". If someone chooses "author", I think we should exclude "one-hit wonders" since they have their own category.

Just happened to be reviewing this. Updated with the new July theme.
JAN - Old 30s-50s & New 00s+
FEB - One-Hit Wonders & Alt-History
MAR - Women SF & Women Fantasy (also Trilogy 1)
APR - Catch-Up Month
MAY - Hard SF & Trilogy 2
JUN - Debuts & Trilogy 3
JUL - Adapted to Screen & Finish A Year/Author
AUG - Extremely/Very Long (1 book)
SEP - Multiple Awards & Newly Eligible (2018)
OCT - Anticipating & Dreading
NOV - Close Calls & Big Losers
DEC - Short Books (3)

Allan wrote: "Just happened to be reviewing this. Updated with the new July theme."

Seems fine, thanks!