I'm not ashamed to say they do affect me, and in fact often provide direction to my reading.
I'm always interested to see what makes it onto various longlists, and keep an eye out for titles that crop up on many lists. That's why I'm currently reading THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST by Stuart Neville. It won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (BTW it is published in the UK as THE TWELVE).
When I read on Mystery Fanfare on Sunday that the CrimeFest e-Dunnit Award (“for the best crime fiction e-book first published in the UK in 2009”) had been won by BEAT THE REAPER by Josh Bazell I popped over to Amazon to see if it was available for Kindle (and was pleased to find it was).
I've been adding links to various lists into my headlines, but here are some in case you've missed them.
There are so many awards it is difficult to keep up with them all. Last year I read all the International Dagger shortlist and all the Ellis Peters shortlist and attempted to pick the winners. Along with the end of your Crime Fiction alphabet, Global reading challenge and the Scandinavian reading challenge these will comprise about 50% of my reading for the year.
ReplyDeleteThanks for those links they will prove useful to chase up award winners I have missed.
Kerrie - Interesting question... I would say that short and longlists don't really determine what I read. I do try to pay attention to them and find it very interesting to see which books win. But I don't really use them to decide what to read. I'm more likely to choose a book either because it draws me in somehow, or because I've read a good review of it from someone like you, whose reviews I trust.
ReplyDeleteAwards and longlists and shortlists are far less important to me than they used to be. I've learned that award panels are not any better at picking books I will like than I am, and often they're much worse. Whether they pick "the best" or not is really not that relevant to me as I want to read things I enjoy and that might not always coincide with what is considered to be "the best". These days I'm more likely to base my reading choices on recommendations from trusted sources whose tastes I'm familiar with.
ReplyDeleteI am making the effort to read the shortlist for the CWA International Dagger award that was announced the other day but only because it's one of the very few times when I will have the opportunity to compare my choice with a judging panel as I've already read 2 of the books, have 2 more here waiting and can get my hands on the other 2 in time. Often when I grizzle about an award winner I've not read the entire shortlist so can't really make an informed grizzle.
I like the Left Coast ones (I think they are the humor ones, right???) but it's impossible to keep up with the rest of them! I may notice the lists because several blogs that I follow put them up, but most of the time they seem to contain books I have not read. I will hunt down any humorous mystery titles that sound interesting.
ReplyDeleteMaria
The random nature of some of these awards is shown by the award to "Beat The Reaper" for best ebook, since the book, unlike most novels, relies on footnotes, which are distinctly ereader-unfriendly, at least on my Kindle.
ReplyDelete(I'll be interested to see what you think of the book, which I thought started as brash fun but turned preposterous, among other flaws.)