Some people are not pleased with the Hugo nominees

[james_davis_nicoll]

one example.

Comments

[jsburbidge.livejournal.com]

In 1976 I could have a good idea of what was out there by browsing the SF at my local bookstore. Today... well, a few weeks ago I was interested in finding books by a NYT Bestselling author in the steampunk genre (Gail Carriger) and found (via an online search) that the local (i.e. only Canadian) chain, Chaptigo, had copies on shelves only at their big box stores in downtown Toronto, which means that casual browsing in a smaller store would just skip over that author. And that is for a bestselling author, not someone breaking into the field.

I read a fair amount, mixing genre and non-genre books, fiction and non-fiction (most of the fiction is SF). I can finish a short novel in a day but might spend a week or two on a doorstop or a dense nonfiction work, depending on time available. And I still read only a fraction of what I'm aware of that's out there. I depend heavily on online reviews and discussions just to do a first-order filtering, especially when I can't rely on browsing shelves (except on the infrequent occasions I get over to Bakka).