The OF Blog: Reading (and hopefully reviewing) the major lit/genre awards

Thursday, April 05, 2012

Reading (and hopefully reviewing) the major lit/genre awards

One of the fun things about taking the time in late December to craft a "Best of 2011" essay is seeing which books (with the exception of the National Book Awards, awarded in mid-November to books published in that calendar year) that I've chosen will be shortlisted for various 2012 awards as well as investigating those works listed on other shortlists that I missed out on reading for some reason or another.

Already this year over at Gogol's Overcoat I have covered the National Book Critics Circle Award, Man Asian Prize, and PEN/Faulkner Award winners (and some of the shortlisted titles for each award).  In the near future, I will be reviewing the Tiptree Award-winning Redwood and Wildfire by Andrea Hairston (and possibly a couple of the Honor Roll stories; at least the ones by L. Timmel Duchamp and Gwyneth Jones will be read, as they are on my iBooks library), the Stoker-winning novel Flesh Eaters by Joe McKinney, and at least the winner (and maybe 2-3 of the shortlist, as I just bought three of the e-books for later reading when I'm on the exercise bike) of the Edgar Award for Best Novel here on this blog.  I will also be reviewing most of the shortlisted titles for the Nebula and Clarke Awards here and the 2012 Premio Alfaguara-winning Una misma noche by Argentine writer Leopoldo Brizuela, the Orange Prize winner, and the LA Times Book Prize winner in Fiction on Gogol's Overcoat.  Then, depending on how out of whack I find the nominees, I'll try to cover at least the winning (if not shortlisted) novels for the Hugos, Shirley Jackson, and World Fantasy Award here.  And if I receive word in time for non-Anglophone awards in languages that I can read, I will attempt to read and possibly review those as well.

By that time, I should have read several of the more well-known literary and genre awards awarded for 2011 fiction (and have started the 2012 lists for the Man Booker and National Book Awards).  It will be interesting to see how I would alter (if at all) my list of 25 notable 2011 releases.  Maybe then I can bitch about the quality (or lack there of) of certain award shortlists and some will see that I would be speaking from experience and not just because the works in question may suck.  Anyone else doing something similar with at least one of the shortlists this year?

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