50% of the selected categories were ones I voted for. How did others fare?

Congrats to WT Sharpe and the MR Book Club on an efficient, streamlined, painless, and civil path to the 2016 list.

2 of 10 :(

Oh boy.

I supported 40% of selected categories. But I also supported free-for-all. So it's more like 41.67%. :P

I correctly predicted 6/10 selections. I was surprised that War (close), Biography (very close), Travel & Adventure (not so close) and Romance (complete bust) did not make it.

Romance was the biggest surprise to me, although Science making it was quite surprising as well.

By the time I voted I knew a couple categories I voted for weren't going to make it (Sports / Food), but I was really hoping for at least one or two more to make it (short stories / horror / our favorites). Oh well, win some and lose some.

I was surprised that all three of Classics, PCML, and Award Winners made it. I was expecting only two of those and hoping for only one. Romance wasn't really a surprise though; I haven't seen any indication that many people here want to discuss romance books.

Three of the seven I voted for made it onto the final list. So 30% of the list is definitely to my taste, while 50% is in the not interest category. I'm thrilled to see nonfiction science and history there so :celebrate:.

While I didn't support a majority of the winning categories it was nice to see that at least 1/3rd of voters supported all of the categories that got in.

I think Romance might have been a victim of previous selections. There was a good lively discussion of books in the nomination period this year which got a rather good variety of nominations.

Short Stories (same author) is the only one I voted for that didn't make it that disappointed me. I was also surprised that Award Winners made it. While I thought we had a strong set of books nominated, there wasn't a lot of nominated books in general for that category this year.

Well, in spite of my need to ritually hate WT Sharpe, most of the categories I wanted got in. There are a few not in the list that I would like to see, and none that I absolutely didn't want and wouldn't participate in. A couple of "yeah, OK, let's wait to see what the actual book is", but most are promising.

:ditto:

I truly think it's great that so many people will be getting the more mainstream book club they wanted and I hope it leads to a lot more participation for a really vibrant club. Just a cursory glance shows that some got six or even eight of their choices.

It's with reluctance that I have to admit that this is probably the wake-up call I needed. I think this has the makings of a great book group, but sadly not one that fits my reading parameters. I hope this doesn't sound like sour grapes, because it isn't. I think the process worked well, that the outcome is good and if I hoped for a final slate with a little more minority appeal, well, that's the way the cookie crumbles. :) No reason I can't drop by if a selection looks good to me.

I would like to have seen Horror, Short Stories, and Romance make it, but in general I'm pretty pleased. I'm glad that Banned Books wasn't nominated, as history seems to show that the idea of celebrating banned books is better than actually reading many of them. The Patricia Clark Memorial Library month is unneeded in my opinion, as just about every month books are nominated that can be found there (although it is nice to honor her memory), and it appears to me that the concept of a month dedicated to Award Winners, a category I once supported enthusiastically, is often better than the actual substance. The important thing is that the people have spoken, and as Mims said, it was relatively painless. No one got everything; hopefully everyone got enough. :)

7/10 feels nice. Hoping it turns out to be a good year.

I was really hoping that classics was left out this time around as we don't need it because we have the library as a category. Also, those oldy moldy classics get nominated way too often in other categories. Also, we really do need a modern fiction to replace classic as classic is as bad a category as we can get given that a lot of classics aren't classics and we argue because some of what's nominated is classic just not the old stuff.

I am going to try to read the books for this list and see how it goes. But if like Dhalgren I find the book to be awful, I'll just stop reading it.

Book Club 2016 Categories Runoff Vote
 

How does this arrangement look? I've tried to space things apart to provide for maximum variety among the winners.

January: Second Chance
February: Mystery
March: Patricia Clarke Memorial Library
April: Award Winners (fiction)
May: Science Fiction
June: Thriller, Suspense & Crime Science
July: Free-For-All
August: Science Thriller, Suspense & Crime
September: Classics
October: Humor
November: History
December: Fantasy