Fantasy Book Critic: The Not the Booker Longlist and The NPR Top 100 SFF Vote Getters

After two years of controversial success, Guardian's Not the Booker returned for a third season with a great change for the shortlist vote; this time you have to write a review - 150 words or more - for the book you vote for from the pretty big longlist HERE.

There are some very good sff choices on the longlist - I put there The Clockwork Rocket by Greg Egan which is still my overall number one novel of the year so far - but for the shortlist choice, I voted for a sf novel with good chances of making the top six, namely Embassytown by China Mieville which is quite superb too.

Go check the list and if you have read at least one of the choices there, liked it and are in the mood to write a quick review in the comments on the Guardian site or for that matter somewhere else like Goodreads, Amazon or a blog and link it there, show your support!

As I will also point out in the next item, the main point about the Not the Booker is its origination in one of the mainstream newspapers with a pretty good global audience and promoting sff there is always something to cheer for.

Vote HERE!

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Recently I have posted the NPR longlist for their Top 100 sff of all time and my ten choices I voted for; the top 100 vote getters have been recently announced and you can find them HERE.

I was not that surprised about the list compiled from about 60000 votes, while 7 of 10 of my choices appeared there, one in the top 10 too.

As expected the usual grumbles from several corners appeared with the usual reasons - this came ahead of that, the quota of this particular gender/race/ethnic group has not been filled especially compared with the longlist where the percentage of that was x, but here in the top 100 we have the lower percentage y - and yes people count that - complaints which imho miss the main point of this list, namely its origination in one of the pillars of mainstream media, home of such famous shows like Prairie Home Companion, This American Life and Car Talk to name some of my favorites I listen to on and off...

Promoting written sff - and the list had a lot of breadth to make it a decent one at the least - in the mainstream is nothing to be sneered at imho and I am really happy NPR offered the genre fans this chance!

12:01 AM |

Posted by Liviu |

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...: Haven't read Embassytown yet. Loved Kraken and I'm currently working my way through Perdido Street Station. Big fan of Mieville.

Love your site, by the way. Keep up the great work.; August 13, 2011 at 12:23 AM
ceramic tile said...: really great article; August 13, 2011 at 2:42 AM
Anonymous said...: I've read 68 of the NPR 100 books.
Six of my top 10 made the list.

I dislike how they bundled some series, thereby unifying votes, while splitting votes for other series (like Mieville's Bas-Lag novels or Pratchett's discworld novels) by listing their books singly. Also, putting two comic book series on a longlist otherwise consisting of novels was an odd decision.

Seeing the Foundation trilogy in the top 10 is disturbing.

Love your site.
Greetings from Germany,
Viktor; August 13, 2011 at 11:00 AM