Two more things on awards

[yendi]

(For those what don't read LJ on weekends, I posted some natterings on the Hugo Awards numbers yesterday).

1. Jason Sanford notes how uninspiring the fiction winners were this year. He's not wrong, and it's a flaw in any system that tries to pick a book of the year without the time and perspective to evaluate all of the works. It's a reason I'm enjoying the occasional look back at previous Hugo slates by Jo Walton.

This is more than a genre issue, of course. My daughter just suffered through her summer reading, the hot mess of a Pulitzer Prize winner called Olive Kittridge. That same year gave us Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth, which was not only much better, but also featured interconnected short stories (assuming the judges were picking for theme or form). Twenty years from now, Strout will be a footnote for College Bowl players to memorize, and Lahiri will be the subject of dissertations.

(Of course, I liked the Egan and Diaz novels that won Pulitzers, so what do I know?)

2. Regardless of some of my issues with awards here and there, there's something awesome about seeing folks I've known for years (or at least known online for years) going on to greatness. On Saturday night, taraoshea won a Hugo, and murnkay won a Harvey. That's just all kinds of awesome.

Comments

[jerel.livejournal.com]

That was E's summer reading? It sounds so...BORING!!!! But I was looking at another (local) school's summer reading, and theirs sounded boring too. And it had bonus Fail, race and cultural! (The Education of Little Tree was required for 9th graders).

As a teacher, I feel summer reading should be high interest literature. Not saying some classics can't be high interest. And in AP courses I can see the need to start on the reading list over the summer, but for standard students, I'd rather they just read. My last school, Number 4, had students pick from the Florida Teen Reads list, which is compiled by media specialists and educators. It's all contemporary YA fic, and it's very genre heavy (which makes me happy.) I've read quite a few of them so far this summer, and they were awesome. I'm just sad I have no students to discuss them with. :(

[ex-gnomicut.livejournal.com]

My housemate requires that her rising seventh graders read The True Meaning of Smekday over the summer, because she is brilliant and her taste is brilliant and she should feel brilliant.

[yendi]

We need more teachers like that!

[yendi]

I wish she'd had those choices. I mean, the current list has Shipbreaker, which is bleak, but actually entertaining.