Progress Report - How many award-winners have you read?

[Nick]

I realised that I've read just over 40% of the winners from our 5 SF/fantasy awards! I can't believe it isn't more than that! But I guess if we read 12 books a month and every year 5 more get added then we're moving pretty slowly!

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The hugo is the award I've read the most of by a long shot! I guess they are often popular and fun easy reads, but I give them middling scores. Tiptree is doing the worst at the moment with an average 2.63 stars out of 5.

I should add a line to the spreadsheet to figure out the range of the scores because I think I give Hugo winners pretty consistent 3/5 - but even though the Tiptree average is lower they all seem to be either 5/5 or 0/5!

How are you all doing?

[Jon]

Like Nick my most read award is the Hugo. That's why I often try to pick a PKD or Otherwise winner, I'm trying to even out my averages. The problem is that I rend to rate the Otherwise Award winners lower. Not because of subject matter or story but usually because of the style. These books often seem to be magical realism, or magical realism adjacent if there is such a thing. Now I'm almost afraid to pick a book from that award.

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The ACC award used to have the highest star rating average for me but a few recent duds brought it down.

Other than the Otherwise the other four seem to be roughly in the same range for star ratings which seems okay to me. Although the PKD rating might be a little higher than expected because it lacks the big name authors of the Hugo, Nebula and ACC.

Notice a bit of a disparity between Nick's ratings and mine? Especially since I think Nick rates books more critically (in a literary way, not a negative way) than I do? I think it's because Nick (I think) prefers science fiction while I'd much rather read fantasy and these awards up until recently skewed heavily to the science fiction side. I'd like to know what you think Nick.

Also thanks to Nick for letting me know how to upload the image!

[Nick]

I can't believe my average score for Hugo is actually slightly higher than yours. I'm averaging 3.51 stars and you're averaging 3.31! Not a huge difference, but I would've bet that I'd be harsher!

I think I do judge books harshly when they're winners of genre awards. If a book wins a science fiction or fantasy award I want it to do something interesting in science fiction or fantasy - if it's a romance story with a SF backdrop then I'm going to be disappointed even if the romance is great.

Jon wrote: "[Otherwise award winning] books often seem to be magical realism, or magical realism adjacent if there is such a thing."

Yes, there have definitely been a couple of Otherwise winners that have felt that way for me. The Carhullan Army could've been general fiction about an 80s lesbian separatist commune, no apocalypse needed, and Rupetta's prose was painfully stretching for literary.

Jon wrote: " Nick (I think) prefers science fiction while I'd much rather read fantasy and these awards up until recently skewed heavily to the science fiction side. I'd like to know what you think Nick"
Yes, I think you're probably right. I like both genres, but there are far more mediocre fantasy books (in my opinion). I wonder if that's objectively true, or if I'm just harder on the fantasy books because really I like SF better?