[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by HomeInMyShoes

I am in complete agreement with JS on it being ludicrous to have two categories the same. There’s really no reason to have that and we read, on the whole, fairly classic books within the book club in general.

I'd also like to see the 2nd classic option replaced with something else. Aside from the problem of defining "classic" (which is only a problem in the abstract... if someone wants to nominate the latest Stephen King novel in classics, and it gets two supporting nominations, and *then* wins the vote... fine, then MR readers can consider that novel a "classic"), there are plenty of other potential categories of books.

I would like to throw in a couple of options:

1 – Award-Winner: must have won one of the following awards – open for other options: Pulitzer, Booker, Giller, and Hugo.

I'd be happy with *any* award. If a book won the National Basketweaving Newsletter Award For Great Basketweaving Books? It's eligible. Because, again, the three-nominations-plus-vote process should keep the *winners* to books that have a certain level of community support. Allow books with any award would encourage people to nominate interesting books that the rest of us wouldn't normally hear about.

Fictionwise used to have an genre award winners category; it's now buried deep in the site and requires using the dropdown menu. (The link is "Hugo and Nebula winners." I can't find a link to the search/dropdown without picking a category.)

2 – Youth: something in the Youth fiction area. While many of us are older, not everyone is up to reading Literature every month and a nod to more youthful titles and youthful members would be nice. I’ve enjoyed many young fiction titles over the years even though I’m not in the target age group anymore.

The YA category has many *excellent* books, both current award winners (Doctorow's "Little Brother," Collins' "Hunger Games") and childhood favorites a lot of us never got around to reading. I'd be happy to see this category instead of the other classic.

I'm not sure which I would vote for if I had to choose, but I'd be very happy to read the discussions about it.

This would be for the year 2013.

Should open a thread for discussion. The last discussion/vote was centered around "should we/should we not change the 2nd classic category," and it was close, but the majority preferred no change. (No idea how much of that was because JSWolf goes out of his way to be obnoxious about it, and they were voting "whatever JSWolf doesn't want," on the theory that the book club is going to select an awesome book no matter what the category is.)

This could focus more on, "if the category's changed, what would we vote on instead?"