Thread: MobileRead 2015 Categories Discussion
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Old 06-20-2014, 08:09 PM   #25
Dazrin
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To get a jump on things when this gets going in July, I thought I would round up all of the categories that have been used and proposed* in the past.

Here are the categories that have been used at some time in the book club already. The items in parenthesis are different names, but I think were intended to be the same categories (or close enough).
  • Award Winners
  • Banned/Challenged Books
  • Classics (MR Classics)
  • Contemporary (MR Contemporary)
  • Fantasy (Fantasy-Trees/Magic)
  • Foreign (originally non-English)
  • Free-For-All
  • Horror
  • Humor
  • MR Author
  • Mystery (Mystery/Crime) (Mystery/Thriller)
  • Non-Fiction
  • Patricia Clark Memorial Library
  • Romance
  • Science Fiction
  • Second Chance/Runners-Up
  • Short Stories
  • Thriller/Suspense (maybe "Mystery/Thriller" goes here)
  • Travel/Adventure

I have also gone through the 2012 category nomination threads and grabbed the unique ones from there. Some have been combined for brevity.
  • 21st Century
  • Modern Fiction
  • Classic Literature (>25 years old)
  • Modern Literature (<10 years old)
  • Books from 1989-2004 (i.e., not modern and not classical literature) (updated dates)
  • Adventure
  • Crime
  • Free-For-All (Everything Else)
  • First in a Series
  • Folk Tales
  • Graphic Novels
  • Philosophy (Greek Philosophy)
  • Historical Fiction
  • History
  • Indie
  • Lottery (Winner chooses book) (Winner provides a list) (3x Winners provide a list)
  • Major Award Winners (non-genre awards)
  • Mythology
  • No PBook Available (only available as ebooks)
  • Non-Classics
  • Science
  • Normally Priced (i.e., not free/public domain)
  • Novels of [specific author] (Robert Heinlein was suggested)
  • Novels written by [specific nationality] author (Japanese and middle eastern were suggested)
  • [User's] Choice (Nyssa and orlok were suggested)
  • Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (and boats)
  • Pulp Adventure
  • Sci-Fi/Fantasy
  • Speculative Fiction
  • Splatterpunk
  • Stories with a [fill-in-the-blank] theme (Christmas was suggested)
  • Urban Fantasy
  • Young Adult

And last, here is the list I would have for voting on if I was dictator. I tried to take all of the basic ideas from above and include them. Sometimes that meant making the category a little less specific, but hopefully I got the intent included.

If starting from scratch, I would have 3 votes and take the top 3-4 from each category below, probably 4/3/4, and then ask a volunteer to sort them in a way that makes "sense" for the year. If we were only replacing a few categories I would see what categories are staying and reduce the number selected from each category to give a well-rounded final list.
Spoiler:

Preselected Category:
January: Second Chance (All the runners-up from last year) - That way we don't need nominations during the holidays and can just have the vote and can extend the vote since people may be busier than normal.

General Categories:
  • Award Winners (choose your own award)
  • Banned/Challenged Books (someone had a problem with this book somewhere)
  • Classics (choose your own definition of "classic")
  • Contemporary Books ("newer" books, any source)
  • Foreign (originally non-English)
  • MR Author (especially if we can find an author who would provide a copy of their book for discussion and discuss it with us)
  • Patricia Clark Memorial Library (celebrate our own wonderful resource!)
  • Free-For-All (anyone except for JSWolf can nominate anything, Jon must nominate a "classic". )***
  • Lottery (volunteer or winner provides a list for selection, see Literary club rotating nominations. If no one wants to provide a list, this becomes a free-for-all month.)
  • Short Stories or Essays (specific short story or a collection which could be an anthology, a collection, or a web list of "best stories", etc.)
  • Independently published books
  • Personal Favorites (what is yours? Maybe limit nominations to 1 book, but don't require a second/third?)
Non-Fiction Friendly Categories:**
  • Non-Fiction (anything non-fiction)
  • Science
  • Philosophy
  • Biography/Memoirs
  • Travel/Adventure (could be fiction or non-Fiction)
  • History
  • Mythology (and folk tales, etc)
  • Humor (could be fiction or non-fiction)
Probably Going to be Fiction Categories:
  • Romance
  • Crime (fiction or non-fiction)
  • Mystery (cozy mysteries, etc.)
  • Thriller/Suspense (hard to be cozy with the action and/or tension in here)
  • Historical Fiction
  • Graphic Novels
  • Young Adult

    Note: I would limit the categories to at most 2 of the following (to prevent saturation):
  • Speculative Fiction (catch-all for fantasy, science fiction, horror, steampunk, etc.)
  • Science Fiction (general sci-fi, Space opera, post-apocalyptic, etc.)
  • Fantasy (magic is generally involved)
  • Urban Fantasy (and paranormal or other contemporary magic.)
  • Horror (Psychological, physical, supernatural, choose your own flavor. Yes, that could include "splatterpunk")


*Proposed categories only from the 2012 nominations threads.
**I don't read much non-fiction, so would probably ask for more categories, but I think these cover most of what was previously suggested.
***I know how much Jon loves the Classics category, thus his interpretation of it is "any good book is a classic". Works for me in the free-for-all category.

Can you tell I didn't have much going on this afternoon?

Last edited by Dazrin; 08-12-2014 at 01:15 PM. Reason: Removed spoilers to make scanning easier.
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