July AwardsCAT: Bailey's Women's Prize and Any SF/F Award

Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction



The Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction is the UK’s prestigious annual book award for a full-length novel by a woman of any nationality written in English and published in the United Kingdom during the previous year. The award was founded in 1996 as the Orange Prize for Fiction. Bailey’s began sponsoring the award in 2014, which was when the name changed; 2017 will be the last year it supports the award. As of 2018, the award name will be changed to the Women’s Prize for Fiction and will have several sponsors.

The 2017 Bailey’s Prize was awarded to British author Naomi Alderman for The Power. The full 2017 shortlist and longest, as well as a list of all previous winners, are available on the Prize website: http://www.womensprizeforfiction.co.uk/.

Any previous winner, short-listed title, or long-listed title qualifies for this category. Please share your choices with us on this thread and on the Wiki.

ETA to fix typos

Any Science Fiction or Fantasy Award

NOTE: This is also this month's category for the SFFKit.



Our topic for July is SFF Award Winners and Nominees, and there are plenty of awards to choose from. Any book that has either won or been nominated for an SFF award, past or present, qualifies. Here are some of the major awards and recent winners:

Hugo: The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin (2016 winner for best novel); LibraryThing CK list
Nebula: All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders (2016 winner for best novel); LibraryThing CK list
Arthur C. Clarke Award: Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky (2016 winner); LibraryThing CK list
Mythopoeic Fantasy Award: Uprooted by Naomi Novik (2016 winner for best novel); LibraryThing CK list
World Fantasy Award: The Chimes by Anna Smaill (2016 winner for best novel); LibraryThing CK list
James Tiptree Jr. Award: When the Moon Was Ours by Anna-Marie McLemore (2016 winner); LibraryThing CK list
Locus Award: Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie (2016 winner for best SF novel)

Most of the 2017 shortlists have been announced. Awards also go to novellas, short stories, anthologies, even plays and screenplays, so there is a lot of choice for this category. You’ll find the full lists and even more awards at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/award_directory.cgi.

Please share what you will be reading on this thread and on the Wiki.

I picked up Redshirts by John Scalzi at a book sale last month. It won the Hugo for best novel in 2013. I can't wait to read it.

Options for me:
Hugo Award: Dying Inside / Robert Silverberg
Nebula Award: ditto
Arthur C. Clarke Award: Far North / Marcel Theroux
Mythopoeic Fantasy Award: I Shall Wear Midnight / Terry Pratchett
World Fantasy Award: It / Stephen King (a reread, but I've had the audio on hold for a while; it's unlikely it will come for me)

>4 LibraryCin: I really enjoyed Far North when I read it last year.

By mistake I bought two copies of Do not say we have nothing by Madeleine Thien so I'll read one and donate one. It was shortlisted for the Bailey's prize this year.

I'm planning on The Barkskins by Annie Proulx. On the 2017 longlist for the Bailey's.

I'm planning to read Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple which was on the Baily's 2013 shortist.

>8 dudes22: Hi Betty, I'm reading Where'd You Go Bernadette also. I'm also going to try and read Pleasantville if I can.

>8 dudes22: >9 lsh63: I missed this one on the list, I have it in the TBR too, I need to fit it in as well.

For my Bailey's read I am going with The Bees by Laline Paull from the 2015 Bailey's shortlist. I have quite a few sci-fi/fantasy books that I would like to get to such as The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her own Making by Catherynne Valente which won the 2010 Andre Norton Award, Half A King by Joe Abercrombie winner of the 2015 Locus Award for Best YA Book, Blackout by Mira Grant which was shortlisted for the Best Novel at the 2013 Hugo Awards, and, Uprooted by Naomi Novik the winner of the 2016 Nebula Award for Best Novel.

I'll be spending most of July reading books that fit into this challenge. I joined again this year as a voting member for both the Hugo and the Aurora (Canadian SFF) awards. Both organizations provided gigantic voter packets containing most of the nominated works.

Towards the end of the month, I will be reading Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 2004 and a nominee for the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. I have read it before, but it is my RL bookclub's choice for August this year.

I am reading Seveneves by Neal Stephenson which was Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novel (2016) and Prometheus Award for Best Novel (2016).

For this challenge I managed to read both my choices earlier in the year: The Wild, by Esther Freud, which was an Orange Prize longlister in 2001; and Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie, which won the Arthur C. Clarke award for Best Novel in 2013, and the Hugo and Nebula awards for Best Novel in 2014.

>3 raidergirl3: I loved Redshirts! :)

>15 rabbitprincess: I've been looking to read Redshirts for a while and was very excited to find it at the library sale

I forgot to mention the Bailey Prize books I have on hand and would like to read: Rush Oh! by Shirley Barrett, and Girl at War by Sara Novic. I've had Love Marriage by VV Ganeshanathan on my shelves for ages, but probably won't get to it next month.

I'd like to start in on Grass in July, which I picked up at a used book store about 5 years ago and stopped just as soon as I started it, for a reason I'm completely forgetting now. It seems it was nominated for a Hugo and a Locus award back in 1990, but I know it mostly because Sheri Tepper is one of Those Names in female SFF. She apparently died last year....

My shortlist of books for the Bailey's/Orange prize includes Home by Marilynne Robinson, Gillespie and I by Jane Harris, Larry's Party by Carol Shields (would also fit the July RandomCAT) and Life after Life by Kate Atkinson.

For the SFF awards, I've got several audiobooks to choose from - Dodger by Terry Pratchett, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, and Bone Gap by Laura Ruby.

I'm planning to read State of Wonder by Ann Patchett for the Bailey's Prize. I'm also planning to read Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner for the SF/SFfKit which will also work for this CAT as a Hugo Award winner.

I think I will read Speaker for the Dead, which won a Hugo and a Nebula award, and the next installment in The Wheel of Time series (nominated for a Hugo in 2014) - The Great Hunt

First up this month, Helen Dunmore's gothic 2013 winner, A Spell of Winter.

I finished Pleasantville which was on the 2016 longlist. It didn't wow me or maybe I just expected more because of the nomination. It's a sequel to the author's earlier work, Black Water Rising, which I did enjoy more than this one. I think it was just a tad heavy handed on politics and took a long time to reach its conclusion.

I have just completed my first read for the July AwardsCat with Blackout by Mira Grant which was a 2013 Hugo Nominee.

I read When the Moon was Ours by Anna-Marie McLemore, it won the Tiptree which is awarded to SF or Fantasy work that explores gender issues. I didn't feel like this was so much fantasy as magical realism and also Latino Folklore. It also won the Stonewall Honor in 2017.

I'm planning on Seanan McGuire's A Red-Rose Chain for this CAT. McGuire's October Daye series is a favorite of mine, and it has been nominated for the 2017 Hugo Best Series award.

I loved Uprooted by Naomi Novik which was nominated for a 2016 Hugo Award.

I read Where'd You Go Bernadette by Maria Semple. It won the Bailey's in 2013. I had intended to read Barkskins by Annie Proulx but when I realized it was over 700 pages I decided to wait until the first of next year when I won't be so busy.

>27 clue: - I just mentioned on your thread that I'm going to be reading this too. As soon as I finish one of the two books I'm currently reading.

I will be reading The Underground Railroad in late July or early August, so I'm going to earmark it as my book for this month's challenge. Not only did it win the National Book Award and the Pulitzer, but it was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award and a finalist for the Locus Award.

>29 sturlington: I will be reading Underground Railroad end of July, starting soon in fact.

The August thread is up: August AwardsCAT

I just finished Girl at War by Sara Novic which was longlisted for the Bailey Prize in 2016. Very good read, I flew through it, unable to put it down.

I also finished Redshirts a Hugo Winner in 2013 which was a fun romp through Star Trek, time travel and science fiction.

Another great book I've read this month was The Bees by Laline Paull. This book was on the 2015 Bailey's shortlist.

I have completed Half A King by Joe Abercrombie, winner of the 2015 Locus YA Award.

I read the graphic novel adaptation of Coraline, which won the 2009 Locus Award for art/nonfiction.

I finished Grass by Sheri Tepper, my first by this classic author in female-written sci fi. The aliens here are extremely alien, and the stretching of religion to a future world is right up my alley. I obsessed and page-turned through the middle and it left me with a lot to think about. It felt a bit disjointed in message, though, beyond the main arguments in favor of murder being ethical and the nature of God's relationship to humanity -- both interesting and more than a little heretical.

I only follow a few awards avidly. One is the Arthur C. Clarke Award, which Colson Whitehead has won this year for The Underground Railroad. Another is the Shirley Jackson Award, which goes to dark fiction (but not necessarily horror or fantasy). This year, Emma Cline won for The Girls, which is not genre but is still a good read.

I read The Underground Railroad which won the Arthur C. Clarke Award. How many awards is this book going to win this year. Is it going to take Booker too?

Dying Inside / Robert Silverberg
3 stars

David gets paid to write university papers for college students. He has been telepathic (he can read minds) all his life. He is now in his 40s(?), and his “gift” seems to be disappearing. He looks back on the good and bad his telepathy has brought him and is trying to deal with the seemingly inevitable loss of it.

Overall, it was ok. The 1970s definitely came through in the book (it was originally published in ‘72): sex and drugs. I enjoyed some of the relationships David had – the rocky relationship with his adopted younger sister, adopted when David was 10 years old; and his long-ago relationship with Kitty were particularly interesting to me. Some of the rest of it wasn’t as interesting, though. I’m not sure why the author felt it necessary to include some of the university papers her wrote for students; I found those boring and mostly skimmed those. The edition I read was published in 2008 and there was a good introduction by the author as to how the book came about.

Unfortunately I didn't get to all the books that I had hoped to this month with Patient Zero by Jonathan Maberry being my last. This book was nominated for a 2009 Bram Stoker Award.

I've finished Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple which won the Bailey's in 2013.

Sorry for being so late in updating this thread. I spent most of July reading from my Hugo Voter Packet and I also started reading from my Aurora Awards (for Canadian SFF) Voter Packet. So I finished a good number of books that fit this challenge!
Angel Catbird, Volume 1 (Aurora Best Graphic Novel nominee) by Margaret Atwood
Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet (Hugo Best Graphic Novel nominee) by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Brian Stelfreeze
A Closed and Common Orbit (Hugo Best Novel Nominee) by Becky Chambers
Ms. Marvel, Vol. 5: Super Famous (Hugo Best Graphic Novel nominee) by G. Woodrow Wilson and Adrian Alphona
Ninefox Gambit Hugo Best Novel nominee) by Yoon Ha Lee
Paper Girls, Volume 1 (Hugo Best Graphic Novel nominee) by Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang
Spook Country (from the Blue Ant Trilogy, Aurora Best of the Decade nominee) by William Gibson
Throne of Jade (from Temeraire series, Hugo Best Series nominee) by Naomi Novik
Two Serpents Rise (from Craft Sequence, Hugo Best Series nominee) by Max Gladstone
The View from the Cheap Seats (Hugo Best Related Work nominee) by Neil Gaiman
Vision Volume 1: Little Worse Than a Man (Hugo Best Graphic Novel nominee) by Tom King and Gabriel Hernandez Walta