Nebula Award Nominees

I was very excited to see the Nebula award nominees this year—for the best novel, 5 out of 6 authors are women! Three of the books (Who Fears Death, Shades of Milk and Honey, and The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms) are books that I was already excited about reading. I am reading Who Fears Death now actually, and it is amazing. I am also happy to see Ted Chiang, Paolo Bacigalupi, and Rachel Swirsky nominated in the novella category and Adam-Troy Castro in the short story category, because I like them a lot. Of the remaining writers, many of whom I don’t recognize, there seems to be a fair amount of gender and cultural diversity, which I love to see. And I am particularly happy that there are a lot of links to the nominated stories!


I want to read as many of these stories and books as I can before the awards banquet on May 21. Some, I surely won’t get to. For instance, I probably won’t read Echo, by Jack McDevitt, because I haven’t read the earlier books in the series, and I hate to start in the middle. I think I may have the first book somewhere, though, so maybe I will hunt that down. The same is true for Mockingjay, the third book in the Hunger Games trilogy, and a nominee in the Young Adult category. And, chances are good I won’t get to the Connie Willis books, because I really didn’t like To Say Nothing of the Dog, the only Willis book I have read. I liked some things about it, and I thought Willis was a good writer, but the plot was needlessly convoluted and her characters were SO STUPID, in my opinion, so I just am not that excited about reading her books. I may give them a try if I can get them from the library, though.

I think I will get most, if not all, of the Young Adult category nominees. My daughter likes science fiction and fantasy, which I like to encourage, and I can read them after she does, which would be fun. We can have a mini Nebula nominee book club! Maybe we could even do some read alouds, and include my 8 year old son; he would probably like that, too.