At almost the last minute, I decided to plunk down the $50 to vote on the Hugo Awards again this year. (There's still time to register, if you do it before midnight tonight, though I'm not sure which time zone. "Supporting" membership is enough to nominate and vote.)
There isn't a book I was quite so squeeful over this year as last*, but without trying too hard I can already think of a few I'd nominate. And I've decided: I'm done with just looking at awards/best-of/top-10 lists and being disgusted at the sheer glut of white guys, or on Popular Author X winning again on a book I felt was weaker than their usual, and grumbling to myself about Some People's Taste. I can vote on this particular award; I am going to.
Also, a little selfishly/cheapskatedly/greedily: the past few years, there's been an e-book package of the final nominees distributed to the Hugo voters, so they can cast informed votes. It generally costs me $50 or more to collect just the novel nominees, anyway, and sometimes the shorter fiction is harder to get my hands on**. So if they do that again this year, I come out ahead. Win!
* But my favorite, Suzanne Collins' Mockingjay, didn't make the short list - didn't even show up on the full breakdown of the ballots, in fact. (Scroll down on that page - the detailed ballot is the PDF link at the bottom.) Either I was mistaken about its eligibility, or only a handful of people nominated it, and it became one of the zillions of books with only like 1 vote, so didn't get listed. Le sigh!
** Although this is at least partially because of my unfamiliarity with the market - I haven't really checked to see which magazines are free, and which my libraries subscribe to, and which anthologies I can get through interlibrary loan, etc.
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