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This was mentioned in this month's books, but I thought it would be a worthwhile discussion... It was mentioned that some years the award winning books, looking back, are less than stellar.

Why not use our collective knowledge to do our own 'retro' voting... pick two books of a particular year that didn't win, but perhaps should have, and get a colelctive opinion about it?

Seems like a fun thing to mix in for a month or two next year :)

It can be done as a buddy read, but not as a monthly read, because even to finish current nominees we need over a decade.

Seems like we could accommodate both Joe's idea and Oleksandr's concerns by choosing a "better" winner from among the existing nominees.

What if we used polls to do a type of voting?

Maybe we can do that when we "complete" a year of nominees (if that ever happens)?

Of course, actual Hugo voting is ranked ballot and the polls here on goodreads aren't, so it's not quite the same.

I'm assuming that we might not necessarily read every book that's ever won an award, but if that's not the case, no problem.

Joe wrote: "I'm assuming that we might not necessarily read every book that's ever won an award, but if that's not the case, no problem."

The general goal of the group is to read any winners and nominees. So if they're on the list, they're up for reading eventually :) Practically, at a rate of 24 books a year, it's not going to happen. So I like this idea as an additional challenge or buddy read.

My main worry would be a practical one - some of those older, lesser-known books are hard to track down.

If you're talking about works that were never nominated, that's a different issue. There are a few hard workers out there collecting lists of all eligible retro-hugo works that might otherwise get overlooked...

If that's what you're talking about, see:
which led to the creation of:

My understanding of the proposal here is to do a "retro hugos" where we select our own winners for years that were already "normal hugos", so mid-50s to present.

Kalin wrote: "My understanding of the proposal here is to do a "retro hugos" where we select our own winners for years that were already "normal hugos", so mid-50s to present."

I see! Well picking anything from recent years circumvents the supply problem. But we've still only read 1-3 from each year as a group so far, and the newer books tend to be much longer in page count than the actual retros.

Well, I have lots of books I think should have been nominated and were not, and some of them I have even discussed before here. I think maybe it might be best if we all just told each other about these books in this thread and then maybe buddy read them.

My first two nominations
1) Sign of the Labrys (1963) and
2) This Perfect Day (1970)
both of which are available on Kindle.

Sign of the Labrys seems very low rated, but maybe that's because so few people have read it. Most of the ratings are 3 and 4 stars.

This Perfect Day seems to have complaints that would have have been a problem in 1970. For example, one review complains that "Seriously, all the drugged dull masses are tan-skinned, slant- eyed communists . . . ." Well, that was what the book was complaining of, also! It was kinda the point of the book. And there is also a real bad trigger (view spoiler)[ a rape, yes distasteful and not realistic. (hide spoiler)] but hey, otherwise it's a great book.

I'm trying to get "The Evolution of Science Fiction" group to read "This Perfect Day". I haven't been able to stir up any interest yet.

How about Alas, Babylon? That book stirred up a bunch of controversy. And if you can overlook some of the 50's stereotypes, still and excellent book