Register Guidelines E-Books Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read

Go Back   MobileRead Forums > E-Book General > Reading Recommendations > Book Clubs

Notices

View Poll Results: Should each month's category in 2013 be unique or are repeated genres OK?
Each month should be a different category or genre. 14 48.28%
Repeats of certain categories/genres should be considered. 15 51.72%
Voters: 29. You may not vote on this poll

Reply
 
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Old 10-28-2012, 12:40 PM   #16
Hamlet53
Nameless Being
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck View Post
Potential other categories include, but are not limited to (I think all of these have been mentioned in the discussions at some point or another):
  • Award-Winners
  • Young Adult
  • Biography (splitting "nonfic" into two categories)
  • Classics-by-age and Classics-by-popularity, or other split of the Classics category
  • War/Military (fiction and non)
  • Free ebooks (guaranteeing that everyone has access that month)
  • Historical Fiction
  • Literary Fiction (we'd have to define it...)

I can think of several ways to split nonfiction into multiple categories; none of them have simple, neat labels. Maybe someone else could come up with that.

Categories that haven't been suggested, even in passing, include Sports, Religion, Erotica, Travel, Poetry, Anthologies, GLBT, and Cooking. (I think. I could be misremembering, or of course something could've been mentioned on a thread I wasn't watching.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by sun surfer View Post
Just to be clear (I think it's clear, but some more casual observers may not realise it), this is not a poll on whether we should add new categories. This isn't a one-and-done, if it passes we get new categories, if it doesn't we don't, sort of thing.

Whether this passes or not, we will still have votes later on for which categories we should remove, including possibly the second classic.

Consider voting for the second option to allow repeats because of the ambiguity of this rule and because if you don't want a second classic, it's cleaner to vote it down in its own poll.




Here are two more that were mentioned that you could add:

-Drama (not plays) - We could really use a category for "normal" plots, no wizards, no aliens, no serial killers, etc. We currently have no category that could fit in many good books because the plots don't fall into some special genre, so this category could fill that hole.

-Adventure - As in, travelling, exploring, etc. It could include books from say, Crocodile on the Sandbank, to The Princess Bride, to Indiana Jones type stories, to spy thrillers such as James Bond, to westerns, to even The Odyssey. I think it could be a great category.


So in a way travel was mentioned in passing but I also like the idea of a specifically travel category too. Perhaps it could be Adventure/Travel? Maybe one sounds more fiction and the other more non-fiction but it could be interesting having a category with a mixture of the two on the same subject.

Also, I like classics split by age. Perhaps we could do 20th century classics and pre-20th century classics or something similar? But, what do you mean by classics by popularity?

I have always liked the idea of non-genre specific award winners as a month or splitting the non-fiction into biography and other non-fiction months. Free ebooks is an intriguing idea, but feel if we are going to do that it should mean free everywhere [without geographic restrictions].

Drama would be good. Fiction without any fantasy elements. Excluding ghosts and other supernatural phenomena, made up science or pseudo science, just believable stories that could have happened.

Splitting classics into two based on publication date would be another attractive possibility. Maybe the idea of classics by popularity meant classics anyone but JSWolf would be content with?
  Reply With Quote
Old 10-28-2012, 08:09 PM   #17
Elfwreck
Grand Sorcerer
Elfwreck ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Elfwreck ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Elfwreck ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Elfwreck ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Elfwreck ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Elfwreck ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Elfwreck ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Elfwreck ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Elfwreck ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Elfwreck ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Elfwreck ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Elfwreck's Avatar
 
Posts: 5,185
Karma: 25133758
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: SF Bay Area, California, USA
Device: Pocketbook Touch HD3 (Past: Kobo Mini, PEZ, PRS-505, Clié)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevin8or View Post
Thank you. I couldn't think of any additional categories. Some of these would be somewhat redundant, or at least overlap. (We have award-winners as nominees every month; most young adult fiction is also some other category, like sci-fi or fantasy; another mobileread book club is already devoted to literary fiction...)

Truth is, I'm indifferent. I'll abstain and be happy with whatever the majority decides.
We already have plenty of overlapping categories. Fantasy and Romance are hardly exclusive categories, and Science Fiction Thrillers are also common. Humor-Nonfic is also very possible. And of course, any genre could contain a classic.

Theoretically, every month could just be "Excellent Books," and open to any nominations. The categories exist to give us some starting point for suggestions, not to divide the literary world into 12 equal parts. We have, effectively, 12 infinite categories. The fact that there are not an infinite number of books available in any one of them is irrelevant; there are *more than we can discuss*, even in the nominations threads.

So the issue isn't, "which 12 categories will best divide up All Of Literature for us to choose from," but rather, "which 12 categories do we want to discuss and recommend to each other?" Or, rather--which 9.

"Classics" isn't going away (nor should it, IMHO), and it's a huge shapeless category.

"Free For All" isn't a category; it's our open space for anything we've excluded from everything else. We don't have a "tv show scripts" category, nor are we likely to... but if there's one worth reading, it could go here.

And January's "runners-up" category is basically a "popular among MR readers" category with no connection to any particular genre.

That leaves 9 categories or genres; as much as possible, I'd like them to be different to encourage a wide range of discussions and exposure to different kinds of books.
Elfwreck is offline   Reply With Quote
Advert
Reply

Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

Forum Jump

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Samsung's electrowetting display in 2013? VaporPunk News 18 11-17-2012 06:06 AM
5 FREE (K) 2013 Calendars bookratt Deals and Resources (No Self-Promotion or Affiliate Links) 0 10-06-2012 08:07 AM
what's coming in 2013? man1337 Which one should I buy? 4 09-29-2012 05:02 AM
DR800 3G connectivity practical uses in 2013? MrWarper iRex 1 09-18-2012 07:31 PM


All times are GMT -4. The time now is 09:58 AM.


MobileRead.com is a privately owned, operated and funded community.