2005 Hugo Nominations

COBOLgrrl writes " The 2005 Hugo Nominations have been announced. Books up for Best Novel include The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks, Iron Council by China Miéville , Iron Sunrise by Charles Stross, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke, and River of Gods by Ian McDonald."

Comments

There should be more online awards given........

[CSMastermind]

Maybe I'm just not, "in the loop", but I don't know of many online awards given. I don't like the concept of afew select people voting on who to give the prize to, I'd rather have open online voting. I'd also like to see more writing contests (again maybe I just missed them). By the way Ian McDonald is amazing.

Re:There should be more online awards given.......

[FireballX301]

Remember, popularity != quality. Just because something is popular doesn't prevent it from being, for example, pandering tripe.

And you know how english majors are.

Melville is overrated

[Silverhammer]

In my opinion, China Melville is overrated as an author. His Perdido Street Station was the "it" book of 2001, but after I finished reading it, I couldn't help but wonder what the big deal was.

Granted, he has an excellent sense of the phantasmagoric and his worldbuilding skills are certainly impressive, but as an author, he just doesn't have the chops. His characters are almost too angst-ridden to move in a forward direction, and his plots read like a bad slasher flicks.

Take away his word processor and give him a job as a conceptual designer. Everyone will be happier in the long run.

Time to Place orders on Amazon.com

[DumbSwede]

Seriouslly, I went through Slashdot's Book Review topics last summer compiling a summer-reading list. I ordered 10 to 12 books and I'm still working my way through it. I know some minimum of a book a week types would be aghast I'm not done, but I do a lot of technical reading as well, plus I haven't been completely exclusive to the books I picked up over the summer.

From last summer's reading list
Finished:
Perdido Street Station - China Melville
Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman
The Golden Age - John C. Wright
Pattern Recognition - William Gibson
Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson
Manifold Series - Stephen Baxtor
Currently Reading:
King Rat - Neil Gaiman
Still to Go:
Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood

Some other Authors I follow
David Bin, Ben Bova, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Frederik Pohl.

I find the quality of my reading much better on average following Slashdot suggestions rather than randomly picking books by title and pretty covers at Barnes & Noble.

Didn't quite care for Pattern Recognition, so just one clunker for me -- maybe I just didn't get it, I wanted more of a well defined plot.
Taking inordinate pride in making through all 1130 pages of Cyrptonomicon, but after you make it past the first 300 pages you'll find yourself screaming through it.