Hugo & Nebula Awards: Best Novels discussion

One of our annual review threads where group members can summarize their past year of books. Some of the questions are focused on monthly group reads & challenges, but you can also comment on other books from our shelves or other titles you read during the year. Add or talk about any other observations from the past year!

Answer these questions for (a) monthly group reads and (b) all your other reading:
The novel you enjoyed most
The book that made you think the most
The weirdest group read
Your favorite newly discovered author
Favorite sci-fi & fantasy
The book that exceeded your expectations
Your favorite protagonist & villain
The novel you'd like to re-read in the future
The most difficult read
The novel that failed to live up to its hype
The novel that disappointed you most
Best non-fiction book you read

The novel I enjoyed most:
Group - Starplex - wanted to read it for years, best Sawyer I've read
Other - The Prestige - which some of us read as a Buddy Read - excellent

Book that made me think the most:
Group: Grass - different type of society that led to all sorts of disaster
Other - The Word for World Is Forest - a LeGuin masterpiece; Runners-up - The Devil's Element: Phosphorus and a World Out of Balance & Nuclear War: A Scenario

Weirdest:
Group - Picnic on Paradise
Other - Singularity Sky - nearly incomprehensible

New Author:
Group - Only a couple new ones, Sheri Tepper
Other - Not many new ones, but Kate Elliott & Annie Jacobsen really stood out

Favorite SF & Fantasy:
Group - SF: Starplex, Fantasy: Grass
Other - Apart from those mentioned above, SF: The Elephants' Graveyard, Fantasy: King's Dragon

Exceeded Expectations:
Group - Grass, The Uninvited
Other - The Falling Woman, A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead

Favorite Protagonist/Villain:
Group - Kuni Garu & Mata Zyndu, The Grace of Kings
Other - Priscilla Hutchins, Chindi, Hugh King's Dragon

Novel I'd Like to Re-Read:
I'm not much on re-reading, but I will probably re-read The Mercy of Gods when the next book comes out

Most Difficult Read:
Group - Earth from a story/length point of view, just took forever; Anathem - couldn't get into it
Other - Singularity Sky - gobbledygoop

Failed to Live Up to the Hype:
Group - Provenance - just didn't like it nearly as much as the Ancillary books
Other - The White Dragon

Novel That Disappointed:
Group - The Rise of Endymion - yes, it wrapped up the series, but it was way too long
Other - Stand on Zanzibar - a difficult book

Best Non-Fiction:
The Devil's Element: Phosphorus and a World Out of Balance
Nuclear War: A Scenario
both frightening

Novels enjoyed most:

Group: Anathem
Other: The Overstory by Richard Powers

Book that made you think the most:

Group: Anathem
Other: The Gradual Some strange stuff going on

Weirdest group read

None of the ones I read seemed particularly weird for sff.

Favorite newly discovered author

Vajra Chandrasekera of The Saint of Bright Doors

favorite sci fi & fantasy

sci fi: Anathem, The Tusks of Extinction

fantasy:The Butcher of the Forest

Book that exceeded expectations

Group: Starplex
Other: The Saint of Bright Doors, Starling House, Rainbows End, The Butcher of the Forest

Favorite protagonist

Erasmas (Anathem)

Novel you’d like to reread:

I don’t think I read anything I foresee wanting to reread, at this point

Most difficult read:

The Saint of Bright Doors and Fourth Mansions presented challenges related to religious allusions.

Novel that failed to live up to its hype

?

Novel that disappointed most

Traitor's Purse. by Margery Allingham

Alligham is supposed to be one of the great British authors of “golden age” mysteries, but this is the second novel I’ve read by her that turned out to be a wild 1930s espionage yarn that didn’t work for me at all. I’ll try one more of her books, a later one, and hopefully it will be more of a whodunnit.

best nonfiction:

Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster Powerful and interesting on a number of levels

The High Sierra: A Love Story. Pure KSR

The novel you enjoyed most:
Group: The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons - a really fantastic follow-up to Hyperion if less ambitious in style, but really captivating from start to finish, would have been perfect as simply a duology
Other: I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman - this book deserves the renewed hype wave it's received, it's magnificent

The book that made you think the most
Group: Starplex maybe, there were some cool space ideas I'd never even considered before
Other: Yoga for a World Out of Balance: Teachings on Ethics and Social Action by Michael Stone - very dense, very thoughtful

Weirdest
Group: Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein - weird in an icky, gross, are-we-really-doing-exploitative-sex-cults kind of way
Other: Noon: 22nd Century by Arkady Strugatsky - culturally, historically, and structurally unusual/foreign to me as a reader, was hard to make my way through 'cause there was so little about it to hold onto as a "story"

New Author
Group: not many to list here, from the broader H/N list: Joanna Russ, Nancy Kress, Vajra Chandrasekera
Other: Karin Lowachee, Lee Mandelo

Favorite sci-fi & fantasy
SF: A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge - one of the absolute best space operas I've ever read, near-perfect.
Fantasy: The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera - just fascinating, I'm excited to read Rakesfall when I can find time

The book that exceeded your expectations
Group: Starplex by Robert J. Sawyer - I really haven't enjoyed the few books of Sawyer's I've tried, but except for some awkward "human drama" stuff this book was so much fun
Other: The Mountain Crown by Karin Lowachee - a very recent release, I only read it a few weeks ago and was expecting basic dragon stuff, but this book had a very emotionally layered approach to the experience of being colonized and displaced, and I'm looking forward to the sequels.

Your favorite protagonist & villain
Protagonist: Breq/Justice of Torren from the Ancillary Justice series by Ann Leckie
Villain: the TechnoCore from The Fall of Hyperion - the slowly unfolding depth of the AIs' loathing for and betrayal of humanity was truly epic levels of villainy

The novel you'd like to re-read in the future
Not a big re-reader

The most difficult read
Group: no diffcult reads this year
Other: Yoga for a World Out of Balance: Teachings on Ethics and Social Action by Michael Stone

The novel that failed to live up to its hype
Group: Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein - a classic of the genre, they said. extremely influential, they said. worth reading for anyone interested in the trajectory of SF, they said. well, this book was a steaming pile of nonsense, just a total mess with no redeeming qualities I could find. Hashtag #notmyclassic
Other: Starter Villain by John Scalzi

The novel that disappointed you most
Group: the goddamn The Rise of Endymion by Dan Simmons - everyone said that Endymion was the low point of the series and then this book gets the series back on track for its conclusion. LIES, all lies. This was the WORST, so long, so boring, and every "revelation" came through a huge infodump by one of the talking head characters. At least Endymion had lots of adventure.
Other: Camouflage by Joe Haldeman - it won the Nebula against some pretty stiff competition so I went into it expecting interesting things. Nope, just a *seriously* bad book.

Best non-fiction book you read
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappé - a difficult (ie. painful) read, but important documenting of the atrocities leading to the creation of the state of Israel

The novel you enjoyed most
Group: Anathem. It was very rewarding on all levels. Stephenson is a hit-or-miss author for me, but this was a big hit, not quite on the same level of brilliace as The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, but close second. It was as if Stephenson had discovered Greg Egan and wanted to write a book in his style.
Other: Time Shelter, my absolute favourite book of this year. I had never read heard of Gospodinov before, but I rushed to borrow couple of other books by him in quick succession.

The book that made you think the most
Group: Immortality, Inc.. This was a book that could've and should've been much better, if only it was longer and less flippant. Full of great ideas, it made me really ponder how great this could've been with heavy editing and some rewriting.
Other: Probably Time Shelter, honestly, but I'm going to go with The Anomaly.

The weirdest group read
Probably Grass. It had a lot going on, and I don't think it really came together in a satisfying manner, but there were good bits.

Your favorite newly discovered author
Group: I guess Robert Sheckley, although that's only because I didn't really discover any other authors this year through the group.
Other: Georgi Gospodinov, no question about it.

Favorite sci-fi & fantasy
Scifi: If Time Shelter doesn't count, it's I Who Have Never Known Men. That was a book that left the reader with a ton of questions, but in a good way.
Fantasy: I'm not a big fantasy reader. Does Animal Farm count as fantasy?

The book that exceeded your expectations
Group: Picnic on Paradise. I had only read The Female Man from Russ before, and didn't rant like it. But PoP was a completely different kind of book, and a pretty good one to boot!
Other: War with the Newts. I didn't expect this book to be such a riot! It was literally laught-out-loud funny, I stopped repeatedly to quote some quip to by wife.

Your favorite protagonist & villain
Dafyd Alkhor from The Mercy of Gods was a pretty interesting protagonist, I'm not quite sure which way his personality is going to develop in the later books, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that he stays interesting and morally complex.
Prince Red from Nova was quite a memorable villain, in all his pettyness.

The novel you'd like to re-read in the future
Group: I don't think I'll be re-reading any of the books I read with the group this year, but Nova was already a re-read for me.
Other: I'm going to re-read all the Gospodinov books at some point, first of all Natural Novel; I don't think I really got everything I could've from the first read.

The most difficult read
Group: They were all pretty easy. Um, Grass? Or Anathem?
Other: The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 was an extremely detailed book about the events leading up to the WWI. It was really dense and took me forever to finish.

The novel that failed to live up to its hype
Group: Were any of these hyped? Um, I guess Grass was the one wgere I wondered why this book in particular had been nominated in the first place.
Other: The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain. This had lots of hype, but it was the only one-star rating I gave this year.

The novel that disappointed you most
Group: Grass. It had good elements, but it didn't really pull together as a story.
Other: Service Model. I expected more from Tchaikovsky.

Best non-fiction book you read
Purjelaivoilla isoisäni matkassa: Albert Herman Snellman, 1828-1904 (Raahen museon julkaisuja) tells the story of a captain who lived his life on sail ships, on the age when steam surpassed the sails. It was super interesting.

Antti wrote: "The novel you enjoyed most
Group: Anathem. It was very rewarding on all levels. Stephenson is a hit-or-miss author for me, but this was a big hit, not quite on the same level of bril..."

I’ll have to read War with the Newts.