Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Tuesday Thingers: Awards

From The Boston Bibliophile - today's question: Awards. Do you follow any particular book awards? Do you ever choose books based on awards? What award-winning books do you have? (Off the top of your head only- no need to look this up- it would take all day!) What's your favorite award-winning book?

LibraryThing's Common Knowledge feature tracks awards; you can find it here.


Two things come to mind when I think of book awards. The first one is that I always shop the Young Hoosier Award bookshelf at the library when I am helping my kids pick out their books. Those are good books, usually quite interesting and my kids like them. The only issue is that those books normally are not in the school's AR list of tests (retention testing system our school uses) and my kids are definitely into making the most of their reading.

When talking awards, the second thought I had was of one of LOLAs (my book club) original members. She had a number of award lists that she read from and was always reading some unique books. She's quite a prolific reader so she was also able to read the more popular books as well. It made for some interesting discussions at book club.

I am sure the majority of the books I've read in the last two years (when I started cataloging on LibraryThing) are not award winners. Probably none. And since there's no easy way to check....I guess I'll never know. :)

To read other answers on award-winning books they've read, click here.

EDITED TO ADD: Based on the comments and Dawn's post at Sheistoofondofbooks, I changed my Library Thing view to include Common Knowledge:Awards and wow! I've read quite a few award winners! And, of course, quite a few that were on the bestseller list. Now I have a new toy to play with at LT!

10 comments:

Traci said...

I've been reading nothing (well next to nothing) but arcs lately, so they haven't had a chance to win any awards, yet. I'm certain that some of them won't be thanking the academy, but there will probably be a few award winners among them.

Brooke from The Bluestocking Guide said...

I love sci-fi but they will never win awards.

Icedream said...

I am sure you have read winners and just aren't aware since that usually isn't the first thing that comes to mind when discussing books you love. Reading is for fun anyway.

S. Krishna said...

I feel like I used to read a lot more award winners than I do now

Anonymous said...

As long as I like it, it's an award winner to me!

Meghan said...

I'm sometimes surprised by the books I've read that have won, so you might have some prize winners lurking in your reading list!

- Medieval Bookworm

Michele said...

Okay, based on everyone's comments and the idea from Dawn at Sheistoofond of books, I modified my Library thing to show the awards. I've read quite a few! Woohoo! Who knew? Well, you guys did! :-)

Joanne ♦ The Book Zombie said...

It is really shocking to find out you have read something that won an award. I am still trying to digest the fact that I had no idea Gone With The Wind is an award winner.

Anonymous said...

I'm glad the instructions were easy to understand! I play around with the display on LT often (maybe I'm trying to keep ahead of Marie's questions?)

BTW, are the pics at the top of your page new/revised? they look great!

Michele said...

BZ - You know, I have never read Gone with the Wind. Not sure why but even now the thought doesn't appeal to me. Hmm...

Dawn (Sheis..) - I just didn't know that all that was there. It was very easy.

The header is brand new as of last night. I just had a generic one before and wanted to jazz up my site a bit. Added my signature to my posts too (I think! HTML is not always easy to figure out. lol)