The Mythopoeic nominations for this year's awards have been nominated:
Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature
* Theodora Goss, In the Forest of Forgetting (Prime Books)
* Nalo Hopkinson, The New Moon’s Arms (Grand Central Publishing)
* Guy Gavriel Kay, Ysabel (Roc)
* Catherynne M. Valente, Orphan’s Tales, consisting of In the Night Garden (Spectra) and In the Cities of Coin and Spice (Spectra)
* John C. Wright, Chronicles of Chaos, consisting of Orphans of Chaos (Tor); Fugitives of Chaos (Tor), and Titans of Chaos (Tor)
Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature
* Holly Black, Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale (Simon & Schuster); Valiant: A Modern Tale of Faerie (Simon & Schuster); Ironside: A Modern Faery’s Tale (Margaret K. McElderry)
* Derek Landy, Skulduggery Pleasant (HarperCollins)
* J.K. Rowling, The Harry Potter series, consisting of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s [Sorcerer’s] Stone (Bloomsbury); Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Bloomsbury); Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Bloomsbury); Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Bloomsbury); Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Bloomsbury); Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Bloomsbury); and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Bloomsbury)
* Nancy Springer, Dusssie (Walker Books for Young Readers)
* Kate Thompson, The New Policeman (HarperTeen)
You can go here for all details. I am excited to see that I have read one of them! Ysabel, by Canadian fantasy writer Guy Gavriel Kay. And two more are on my list of books to get - Theordora Goss's In the Forest of Forgetting, and Catherynne M. Valente's books. Plus for the children's books nominated, I've read all the Harry Potter, and I've been hearing good things about Kate Thompson's The New Policeman. I know some bloggers have read Holly Black's Tithe.
So, in honour of today, I thought I would announce that I have decided to read all the Mythopoeic Award winners and nominees, from when it first began in 1971. Go here for the award winners list, and here for the lists of all the nominees.
I have read a surprising number of books, and I am counting ones I've read already! This is an open-ended challenge for myself, to be completed whenever. Mostly this is my way of reading some of what has been considered the best in mythic fantasy written since Lord of the Rings was published. I am not making this a general challenge to all you only because I can't figure out how to do one of those darn cool buttoms!!! So if you are interested, just drop me a line and we'll keep in touch. Oh, for those who need some encouragement, Neil Gaiman is well-represented on this list!!!
The same goes for the World Fantasy Awards. Go here for the complete list of past World Fantasy award winners and nominees. I have not read quite so many on this list, but still, I am currently reading a nominee for 2006, Paul Park's A Princess of Roumania, and Jonathan Strange and Dr Norrell by Susanna Clarke is on many of my challenges for this year and it won the previous year. Again, this is open-ended for me, like on-going current challenges in the book blogging world to read all of the the Pulitzer Prize and Booker Prize winners. Only mine is to read all the winners and nominees for the World Fantasy Award.
I am very excited about setting myself these challenges. Some day I may join the ongoing Newbery and Pulitzer Prize winner challenges, but for now, I want to read what I already love to read. Don't be surprised if a few mystery award challenges creep in to my on-going list too! Then, I can see what challenges I can join next year, based in part on these that I've set for myself. The Canadian Book Challenge 2 (set to start in 16 days!!) fits in as Charles de Lint has been nominated on both World Fantasy and the Mythopoeic lists.
So what do you think? Is anyone out there interested in reading the best books in the fantasy world over the space of the next several years?
11 comments:
I'm not doing any more challenges because they tie up my reading too much, but I'm really grateful for the links to these awards as I didn't know they existed. Given that I'm halfway through the latest Katherine Kerr I'm back in the fantasy grove and will definitely be mining past winners.
Do read the Kate Thompson. It starts very slowly but by the time you're halfway in you're really caught up in what is a very relevant concept.
I'm doing the Mythopoeic Award challenge, which has me reading seven books that have either won or been on the shortlist. I doubt I'll try to read all of them, but I'll totally follow along with you and put all the good ones down on my TBR list. :D
You rock that list of awards! But I cannot do another challenge. I'm failing miserably at the three I'm in, so I'm taking a haiatus.
I do look forward to hearing your thoughts, and thanks for the lists.
I am also very very interested in reading all the Mythopoeic Awards winners, and I know that Rhinoa has mentioned doing the same starting next year... so maybe you could come up with a little button (I bet someone who knows how to would help we asked) and set up a Mythopoeic Project with its own blog and all that :D
table talk: I know what you mean about challenges!! I have so many!! This one though, is one that will take several years to complete, and I think it's one I've begun doing anyway without knowing - I would get the list of nominees from Locus magazine and read the ones that looked interesting. So this is mostly recognizing that I'm doing this! I'll let you know when i get the Kate Thompson, and thanks for the reading tip about it. It has been getting rave reviews over here. And should you find yourself 'mining past winners' and a growing list read, let me know! :-)
eva: I'm doing that challenge too, which is what got me thinking about doing all of the past winners - once I saw how many I'd already read, and saw ones I'd always wanted to read, it seemed easy and natural to do! And definitely I will review the ones i really like (if not all of them) just to make everyone else want to read them too! lol
andi: it's touch and go if I can get two of the current challenges done this month. It helps that tv is in reruns and it's raining so much I can't get into the garden!! More time to read...but I look at all the ones I've joined and wonder if I just love making lists! well, we all know that one, I do!!
nymeth: I don't even know anyone who can make a button! Is there a site we can go to? Cause I'd love to have a button....so anyone out there reading this who can make a challenge button, please let me know! I will gladly set up a Mythopoeic challenge blog :-)
and I'm very glad you're joining me, Nymeth! Yaay! I'll pop over to Rhinoa and see if she is too.
By the way, I love this challenge so much that I am imagining the incredible fantasy library I will accumulate just trying to read all the winners and nominees!!
Susan, I don't know that I'd *officially* be joining, but both of those awards/lists are the ones I keep in mind when participating in the Book Awards challenges and such. I'm the type of person that likes choosing from the list, but not liking to be duty-bound to read every book on a list. I tend to like some better than others. Like Newberys especially. Some years I just don't see why that particular book was chosen.
But I certainly applaud your efforts to read from these lists :) I do love fantasy!
I just had a thought. And you can blame it on the late hour if no one likes it...I won't mind...but it would be fun to "read" long lists like that if you could do it in teams. In other words, all the list would get covered or reviewed at some point, but it wouldn't be one person doing all the work...and people could read and share what they wanted. Just a crazy thought...
becky: not a bad idea! If we could get a blog going for it especially, people would be welcome to drop by with their review....it would be fun to see how quickly a bunch of people could pool together what they read to do the entire list! I will definitely let everyone know if we can get a button done, so then it would be meaningful to have the blog!!! Meanwhile, I know what you mean about wanting to pick what you want to read, from any list - I was surprised to discover that I'd read something from every year (winner or nominee) anyway, on my own, so I think this is the closest to the perfect award challenge for me to get done, where I read all the winners!!! and enjoy most of them. Every time I look at the Pulitzer list I find my eyes rolling at some of the past winners, same with the Booker. Those lists I pick and choose from!! lol
I've emailed you, Susan, with some ideas for buttons. (Just thought I'd let you know in case you need to rescue me from the Spam folder.)
I like Becky's idea too. That way, if someone wants to read the whole list they still can, but no one will be reluctant to join out of fear of feeling obliged to. And since there's a Mythopoeic Challenge going on this year, I bet you could enlist a bunch of participants to contribute with their reviews.
And yay for a button :D I can't wait to see what Becky made.
Oh I just got a copy of Ysabel from Toronto and am glad you enjoyed it. I said I would set myself the same challenge regarding the Mythopoeic winners and possibly nominees and hope to get started on it next year. Like you I have already read quite a few and have enjoyed them all. Will check out The World Fantasy Awards too.
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