Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Award Winning Book Club Challenge

IMG_8056I've always thought that an Awards Book Club would be wonderful. Every month you read a book that won an award, and by varying the awards, you could read a wide variety of books. Feeling all smart? Man Booker Prize, or the Pulitzer. Heck, read the nonfiction winner if you are full of brains. More relaxed? How about the Edgar winner for a good mystery, or the Hugo or Nebula for some SF, or the Newbery for a shorter read? And then have your holiday party with a Caldecott book or by watching an Academy Award winner movie instead of reading at all!

Sadly, it turns out that most people prefer to read books they like instead of reading something completely different every month. Go figure! So I've never found anyone interested in that book club. But I can come really close by joining in on the challenge hosted by Gathering Books: Award Winning Books Reading Challenge 2015!

Since one of the other challenges I try to make is to march through the Cybils Finalist list, I'm pretty much guaranteed to make it through the Bronze Level (10 or fewer), I'm start by aiming at the Silver Level (11-25 books). This is complicated by the need to actually REVIEW the books, which last year I did not excel, but this year I hope to do better, if you can count one to two sentences as a review.

I may have already read a few -- I'm finishing up the last of the 2013 Cybils YA books and if any of the last three won, I'll be ahead! But I'm not checking until I finish and make my own judgements. Also, I'm not sure, but I'm assuming the books have to win -- no Silver medal Newbery's. Although the page does say Newbery Medal/Honor, so maybe that's too strict?

There's also a hashtag, so maybe these books will prompt a few tweets out of me. More likely I will just annoyingly cross my fingers at my family and shout HASHTAG AWBREAD2015 as I try to get them to read something good.

Read But Not Reviewed Books:
(this will hopefully only rarely have entries)
Silver Inky Award Winner 2010: Shiver, Maggie Stiefvater
Newberry Honor 1997:  Ella Enchanted, Levine
Schneider Family Award  (Teen) 2015: Girls Like Us, Gail Giles
Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction 2014: Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant, Roz Chast
John Steptoe New Talent Author Award (2008): Brendan Buckley's Universe and Everything In It, Sundee Frazier
American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award for Books (1995): The Jury, Stephen J Adler
Costa Book Award 2013: Life After Life, Kate Atkinson
Edgar Award for Best Juvinile 2014: Greenglass House, Kate Milford
Hugo Winner 2014: Ancillary Justice Ann Leckie
Prix du Festival d'Angoulême for Alph-art du meilleur album etranger (1996): Bone 1: Out From Boneville Jeff Smith 7/5/15
National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography (2010): Half a Life, Darin Strauss 7/12/15
Flora Stieglitz Straus Award (2015): Beyond Magenta, Susan Kuklin 7/19/15
National Book Awards For Young People's Literature: The Port Chicago 50, Steve Sheinkin 8/31/15 (finalist)
Sydney Taylor Book Award: Strange Relations, Sonia Levitin 11/22/15
Seiun Award (Best SF in Japan): The Martian, Andy Weir 8/24/15
NCBLA - Notable Children's Books in the English Language Arts (2011): Lulu and the Brontosaurus, Judith Viorst 10/6/15
Tony Hillerman Prize (2001): City of Saints, Andrew Hunt 12/5/15

RITA Award by Romance Writers of America for Best Short Historical (1996)Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Award (RT Award) for Best Regency Historical Romance (1995)Romance Readers Anonymous (RRA) Award for Best All-Time Romance Novel (2001), (2003); Best All-Time Historical Romance (1998), (2001), (2002), (2003); Best Historical Single Title Romance (1994)Lord of Scoundrels, Loretta Chase 12/10/15

Completed Books:


1 comment:

GatheringBooks said...

Very excited to have you join our award-winning reading challenge, and looking forward to your one-liner reviews! :) Award finalists or those who made it to the long-list/short-list (whatever they are called hehe) are also included. :) Here's the linky for March-April just in case you feel inspired to share your reflections on a few books. Your link-up would make you automatically eligible to win our book giveaway for March-April, courtesy of Pansing Books. :)
http://gbreadingchallenge.blogspot.com/p/mar.html