[Elfwreck]

Some suggestions from the other thread:

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

That's why I was only in favor of major awards, such as Nobel Prize winning authors, or Pulitzer Prize winning books. Not genre specific awards. But if it is an unrepresented genre we are after . . .

I would rather "any literary award" than the arguments of why this-or-that award was worth drawing from. Also, any one award is going to have, at most, a few hundred possibilities, unlike the genre options that have tens of thousands or possibly millions of options.

I don't particularly care for the idea of the "award month" book being "the Montgomery County Ladies' Quilting Club Newsletter Best book for reading when your husband is out of town," but I seriously doubt such a book would (1) be nominated, (2) get two or three followup nominations, and (3) win the popular vote. In the meantime, nominating it might pique someone's interest enough to start a discussion thread about "what books do you read when you're stuck alone at home and wish you weren't?"

Westerns certainly is a new genre. It does not float my boat, but than neither do some of the existing genre.

That's my thoughts on it.

War fiction? Not sure what that would be.

I think this is both too limited a genre, and too prone to arguments about which wars are valid choices. (And does it include fictional wars? Does LotR qualify?)

Folktales and Mythical to me it would seem in practice would be giving another month to Fantasy.

I see Folktales/Mythical as a potential single genre that stands alone, well apart from Fantasy. Folktales implies an actual cultural connection in ways that Fantasy doesn't. Folktales are, AFAIK, not really eligible in any of the genre-based months. (They fit in the wild card month, and some publications of them could be classics.)

Poetry again a currently unrepresented genre.

Yes, but poetry support in ebooks ranges from "poor" to "pathetic." I'd rather poetry was not one of the selections until/unless either the software improves (not likely) or more publishers create well-formatted poetry ebooks.

A lot of the beauty and elegance, and therefore emotional impact, of poetry can be lost by bad formatting, in ways that don't affect novels or are relatively easy to fix. (Extra half-inch margins on the novel? Throw it in Calibre & remove them. Extra half-inch margins on the poetry? Throw it in Calbre... and lose all the customized indenting, unless you know how to play with the styles & settings.)

[quote]Some possible others
Drama, i.e. written for stage performance[quote]
I think this also has formatting issues, although not as bad as poetry. I would also worry about a wide enough selection being available, apart from Shakesepeare.

Historical fiction, possibly including alternate histories, but excluding science fiction type technology (e.g. time machines) or fantasy (e.g. magic or mythical creatures)

I'm not sure what "historical fiction" means, really. Anything deliberately set in a time well before the time the book was written? So modern noir detective stories? Westerns? Does it include historical romances? I, Claudius? Clan of the Cave Bear?

Originally Posted by sun surfer

However, if it is decided that it must, here are my suggestions:

Nobel Author/Pulitzer Novel - The book must be by a Nobel-winning author or be a Pulitzer-winning book (these are the big literature awards and while there are plenty others, many are genre....to make it simple we keep it to the two big awards)

Pulitzer prize for fiction: less than 100 novels.
Nobel prize for literature: less than 100 authors, many with several works.

That's an *incredibly* tiny pool of literature, compared to "classics" or even "Any book available at Mobileread."

I wouldn't mind a limited pool of prizes, but I'd rather not point out any one or two as "the ultimate arbitrator of Good Literature Worth Reading." Choosing any one or tiny group of high-prestige, big-name prizes encourages the idea that those are the only prizes that matter.

Drama - By this I mean simply drama-themed books, not plays. There are MANY great drama books that wouldn't fit in any category we have. "Drama" is simply a (mostly) realistic story.

I like this idea, but would want to see some discussion about what it means. Since "drama" isn't an acknowledged genre the way "fantasy" or "mystery" or "western" are, we'd need some fairly simple way to decide, "is this book I like a drama or not?"

Adventure - Books that include travelling, daring and courageous acts, journeys, etc.

Same issue--reasonable thought for a category, but without publisher labels, how do we decide if a book is-or-is-not an "adventure" book?

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If I thought I'd get any support for the idea, I'd push for a month of "derivative, transformative and/or spinoff books"--something based on another work, whether that's a book, movie, or something else. Could include sequels, franchise-novels like Star Trek, books like My Jim and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. (And [other] fanfic.)

But I don't think enough people would find that a compelling genre of book for discussion.