52 books have won the Hugo award for Best Novel. I’ve read 49 of them; that just leaves Foundation’s Edge by Isaac Asimov, The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge, and The Wanderer by Fritz Leiber. I already have the Vinge; the other two should not be too difficult to track down in the course of 2005, though I’d like to buy and reread the Foundation trilogy as a whole before tackling Foundation’s Edge.

Peter Sykes keeps a list of the Top 100 SF books, aggregating from various sources as I did in my previous post about novel in general. The 14 books (not counting annual or award anthology series) I haven’t read from this list are: Dangerous Visions, ed. Harlan Ellison; A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess; The Space Merchants, Pohl & Kornbluth; A Princess of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs; City, Clifford Simak; Babel-17, Samuel R Delany; Tau Zero, Poul Anderson; Grey Lensman, E E ‘Doc’ Smith; Again, Dangerous Visions, ed. Harlan Ellison; The Female Man, Joanna Russ; The Snow Queen, Joan D Vinge; Last and First Men, by Olaf Stapledon; Deathbird, Harlan Ellison; and Dhalgren, by Samuel R Delany. The Vinge is already on my list; so is the first Dangerous Visions because it includes the next story in my grand project of writing up all Hugo and Nebula winners. I shall aim to read at least five of the others in the course of 2005. (Sykes also has a Next 100 best sf books list so this will keep me going for a good while.)

I’ll also be reading the Hugo nominees once they are announced, and will look out for likely prospects from the BSFA and Clarke awards shortlists (which usually have a certain degree of overlap). I tried using the SF Site’s Best of 2003 lists last year; so far I read and enjoyed Venniss Underground by Jeff VanderMeer; read and didn’t quite so much enjoy Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde, Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett and The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases ed Jeff VanderMeer and Mark Roberts; and bought but haven’t yet read The Light Ages by Ian MacLeod and The Golden Transcendence by John C. Wright. That’s a strike rate of only one in four which is not so good.

As for graphic novels, I’ve found the list of 25 must-reads posted on Bookslut in July really good, and will keep up my current plan of reading one of those every couple of months, plus keeping an eye out for Bookslut’s recommendations.