The Arthur C. Clarke Award 2015 shortlist has been announced. For obvious reasons, I'm not going to make further comment, but here are the Goodreads/LibaryThing stats for the six shortlisted novels.
| Author | Title | GR owners | GR ave rating | LT owners | LT ave rating |
| Emily St. John Mandel | Station Eleven | 47349 | 4.02 | 1294 | 4.24 |
| M. R. Carey | The Girl With All The Gifts | 27144 | 3.91 | 643 | 4.05 |
| Claire North | The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August | 9836 | 4.03 | 406 | 4.07 |
| Michel Faber | The Book of Strange New Things | 6936 | 3.73 | 488 | 3.87 |
| Emmi Itäranta | Memory of Water | 973 | 3.79 | 123 | 3.88 |
| Dave Hutchinson | Europe In Autumn | 125 | 3.77 | 48 | 3.75 |
There are some interesting shifts from the figures of a few weeks ago (compiled 21 March).
I read the Charles Yu novel as a Carl Brandon Award judge and found it distinctly unengaging – I suspect I would have given up if I didn’t have to read it (others rate it very highly though.) However, he also had a short story submitted (‘Loneliness Package’) which I thought was marvellous.
Other than that, I’ve read 35, plus several others that I’ve read part of the series. Of the ones you haven’t read, I’d recommend Peter Beagle’s ‘The Last Unicorn’ (though ‘A Fine and Private Place’ is probably my personal favourite) and the first of the Diana Wynne Jones ‘Castle Trilogy’ (Howl’s Moving Castle) – the other two are readable enough but not her best work.