SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion
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How about an annual book award voted for by members?
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I was thinking about doing something like this earlier this year. The reasons I didn't were mostly due to the technical details. If we were to vote now would it be the 2014 or 2013 award? Which books would be eligible? It came up in a bunch of the awards threads that you need time to read all the books that came out last year so it's best to vote in May(ish) for books published in the previous calender year. How would we come up with a short list? If we can come up with reasonable answers to those kinds of questions I'd love to set it up!
You can do two - one for books put on the bookshelf in the past calendar year, another for any book published in that calendar year, perhaps?Favorite group poll-selected book(s)
Favorite genre published book(s)
Or, well, ehrm, four I guess. One for Sci Fi, and one for Fantasy, in each?
For 2013. They just announced Pulitzer for Fiction last week, so it's still in the right general timeframe :D.
I think that such a group award would be a great idea, as it would purely represent the choice of readers rather than that of critics and experts. A vote in May for the books written the previous year sounds just right. I would however keep the selection to a single group: favorite group poll-selected books, with first, second and third choices.
I think with any award the voters would have read a small selection of books published in the year, but combined a group as large as this one would have covered a wide enough selection overall.
This is just an idea, but you could have a long list from nominations, then a shortlist that is short enough for people to have a go at reading them in a few months.
Many group reads would not necessarily have been published in the last year, but if you have a vote based on group reads then chances are that a lot of members would have read them.
Damian
This is just an idea, but you could have a long list from nominations, then a shortlist that is short enough for people to have a go at reading them in a few months.
Many group reads would not necessarily have been published in the last year, but if you have a vote based on group reads then chances are that a lot of members would have read them.
Damian
I guess it comes down to group reads vs release year as polls. I don't want to overload the group with too many polls. Both have reasons why we should do it. Group reads are the books we specifically chose but release year could introduce new books we missed. We need more input from everyone on which they'd prefer.
Damian wrote "but within the group format it might generate an interesting discussion"He he he. Yes, a lot of virtual ink will be spilled on this.
I'm all for it. I don't think you can do retrospectives. Just start now; Best of SF 2013, Best of F 2013. Long list(10, normally voted in Jan)->short list(5, normally voted in Jul)->winner(voted in Dec).
Honestly I don't have as much time as I'd like to be able to give to this group so I wouldn't want it to be a long process with lots of work. I also think doing it based on group reads would be of more relevance than on 2013 published books. I can already see in my mind what the top books would be, as I'm sure most people here could.
I think a simpler poll with just our group-reads (or perhaps extended to those that were on the poll but never made it) would do fine.
I think group-reads makes more sense. It would also give people more of an incentive to participate in the group-reads.
I concur.
It will make for a longer story arc through the year, as we consider where each book fits into the larger picture.
Damian
It will make for a longer story arc through the year, as we consider where each book fits into the larger picture.
Damian
Excellent! I'll set up the polls for 2013 and we'll tell everyone about it in the group email on the first. It's going to be hard to pick a favourite actually :P
The polls are up! You can go cast your votes here and here. I found the fantasy choice fairly easy since The Black Prism is one of my all time favourite books, but the scifi choice was very very difficult. It's a really nice list actually. Good idea Damian :)
Hi EveryoneSorry, I only just found this conference - and the heading brought back memories! Many years ago (wow! 1971 - over 40 years!) I was involved in starting the first Novacon, which went on to issue the first Nova Awards. Novacon is now preparing for number 44 - Ye Gods, I feel old!
Anyway - things were different then. A small and frankly amateur group could get together and do stuff like that - and because our ambitions were 'UK' rather than worldwide, it worked. Nowadays, with so many pre-existing awards, so many conventions issuing their own awards, and the whole environment being 'worldwide', plus the advent of electronic self-publishing ... I think you need a particular twist.
Concentrate on independently-published work? Or on electronic material?
MK (message 3) - sorry, I think that separation is too easy at a superficial level, but difficult when you get down to the nitty-gritty. There are quite a few works that fuzz that boundary - Goodreads had a whole conference thread on that not so long ago?
Jeanette (message 10) has sort of the right idea, though I feel it might be too restrictive.
Anyway - at this point I will back off, because I always thought that if someone gets too dogmatic (pushy) they should be prepared to do the work themselves - and at the moment I don't have the time to make much of a contribution.
If you go ahead with this, I wish you luck. The suggestions above are mostly good. Go for it, and may your Gods go with you!
Just an idea.
Damian