[Bookpossum]

It sounds as if everyone is enthusiastic to give sun surfer's suggestion a go. Here are a couple more suggestions of how to work out which set themes to have.

1. We all vote on the 12 themes (multiple choice of course) and the six that get the highest number of votes are the ones for the year.

2. We keep most of the themes, but spread them over two years. We could replace Open and Lottery with, say, Biography/Memoir (fantasyfan's suggestion) and something else which would also be open to suggestion and if necessary, voting. Then the only stipulation would be to have one Region in each year, and one Non-Fiction in each year for those like caleb who don't enjoy it.

And finally because I missed commenting earlier, I agree with Billi's suggestion from a while back that an extra day for nominations and voting could be helpful, especially for people who might be travelling for work or pleasure, or even just have houseguests for a few days and don't get to the computer.