MobileRead For the 2016 categories, as a 1st step, can we....

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by treadlightly

As per this poll, the 12 most popular genres in order were:

Science Fiction
Fantasy
Mystery
Historical Fiction
General Fiction
Nonfiction
Comedy
Other
(Auto)Biographies
Romance
Vampires(?)
True Crime

Of course, that was based on the list constructed for the poll.

See, Romance is only barely in the top 10! We can afford to drop it ...

/This might be a little self-serving.

Originally Posted by HomeInMyShoes

I'm worth picking on and it's a valid point and good question.

They are just genres within fiction. Fiction was the last category I added to my list. I was looking through all the books I've read worth sharing in the last few years and there was no place to nominate most of them. They are non-genre fiction. Without plain fiction we are missing a large portion of books out there. I am hypocritical in that respect. Why fiction and non-fiction mean different things. One is about including and one is about excluding? I can only argue personal preference. Your preference or anyone else's is no more wrong or right than my preference.

I want the book club to be fiction and not non-fiction. Some may want more non-fiction than fiction. Which is where Issybird's point about subgroups and categories makes a lot of sense. I might go with four votes per person, but that's a statistical argument based on an assumption of sample size and what I think I know about the group (all of which could be wrong.)

I see lots of potential non-fiction categories: history, biography, self-help, health, religion, philosophy, cooking, etc. being viable categories. We make guesses, but I don't think we're a religion and cooking bookclub. Maybe we are though, maybe that's what is wrong. I am perfectly willing to brainstorm and be mocked and be wrong. I know I am one of those weird people that just reads plain fiction and am a complete geek about a few splinter subjects. Who here wants to read about information and classification, urban planning, music, math, and human-computer interaction?

Yes, my post was to just illustrate the varied preferences that exist here even among those who are participants in these discussions. Trying to satisfy everyone is impossible, and the more one satisfies one person the less likely the all will be happy.

Here are a few thoughts that occurred to me this morning . . .

Since the preference among this group does seem to be for fiction, why not just make this club a fiction club without any specific categories? That is every month a free for all fiction month, except perhaps for one second chance month a year?

One possible way to do this would be to just automatically nominate all the entries for the NYT Best Seller list for the last week of the previous month (or some similar source) and vote on that. Or some similar list that would satisfy those who want to avoid “old and musty books” as well as provide some variety of the type of fiction. Granted this would likely leave a large number here who would be happy with a diet of only SF and/or Fantasy unhappy, but since I first started participating here I've always thought that there would be enough interest for a club dedicated to just those two similar categories.

I really have no suggestions for how to up participation in the actual discussion which IMHO is the reason for a club like this to exist. Virtual pizza and beer does not sound near as appealing as the real thing. Maybe some sort of reward for contributions to the discussion?

I agree that the participation in the book club, and later two clubs, has steadily decreased in the time (now a number of years) that I have been a MR member. I personally think that this has little to do with the nomination categories, nomination process, or voting process. I think that it is more to do with the success of ebooks. That is the growth of ebook readership and the parallel growth of alternative sites to MR. Including sites for book discussion.

So anyway that's a few more of my thoughts to toss into this free for all discussion. I still like the idea of Tom being a benevolent dictator for the book nominations.

[Synamon]

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

Yes, my post was to just illustrate the varied preferences that exist here even among those who are participants in these discussions. Trying to satisfy everyone is impossible, and the more one satisfies one person the less likely the all well be happy.

Here are a few thoughts that occurred to me this morning . . .

Since the preference among this group does seem to be for fiction, why not just make this club a fiction club without any specific categories? That is every month a free for all fiction month, except perhaps for one second chance month a year?

I think this idea merits consideration.

I'm not sure if anyone has noticed, but all the proposed lists contain at least half of the current categories and there isn't more participation during those months than for months people are suggesting replacements for.

I honestly don't believe tweaking the categories will have any effect on participation. Something more drastic has to be done, even if that means limiting the bookclub to speculative fiction or widening it to anything on the bestseller list.

[Luffy]

"I honestly don't believe tweaking the categories will have any effect on participation."

"why not just make this club a fiction club without any specific categories?"

I think these two quotes are the best things that have come out of the discussion. This debate has been very interesting, and might be the best thread on this site. I don't think the above suggestion will be realized. But it's theoretically the next big step for the group.

[CRussel]

I could easily see us moving to all fiction (I think we're close already, and I see a lot of energy moving in that direction), but I'd very much NOT like to see no categories. The world of "fiction" is just way too broad. Without some constraints each month in the nomination process, you'd very likely see way too much similarity in the choices as a majority (or at least strong plurality) group ended up focusing the types of books and genres chosen. With categories, that's much less likely to be an issue.

[Nyssa]

Originally Posted by CRussel

I could easily see us moving to all fiction (I think we're close already, and I see a lot of energy moving in that direction), but I'd very much NOT like to see no categories. The world of "fiction" is just way too broad. Without some constraints each month in the nomination process, you'd very likely see way too much similarity in the choices as a majority (or at least strong plurality) group ended up focusing the types of books and genres chosen. With categories, that's much less likely to be an issue.

This is my concern.

I think having specific categories greatly helps to focus the whole process each month.

[HomeInMyShoes]

Now that I have a real beer in my hand this whole conversation is more fun.

Goodreads has voted on awards for the best books of the year. We could take a month each to vote on the top ten from their categories.

If we just use the current bestsellers I can see book availability being a problem. My library usually has them but wails ts can be long. Getting us a year back eases availability a bit.

[Luffy]

I think Hamlet53's all fiction idea only looks neat on paper but would work exponentially, terrifically in practice. I hope this idea isn't swept under the carpet before its supporters and naysayers set its advantages and disadvantages side by side. Just my 2 cents.

[caleb72]

This is again letting Tom dictate, but how about not having a clue what the genre/theme of each month is and Tom just selects something. Eg. this month we're going to focus on Urban Fantasy with a twist of Romance etc...

Then we have the nomination and voting process work as usual. That way Tom can be as specific or general as he likes.

I don't know if it would work in practice, but I like the idea of approaching each month not knowing what the theme of the book club read is going to be.

EDIT: Or even a random theme generator. Where we have a group of x themes/genres and a small program just picks one at random. Tom pushes the button each month and then he announces to the team and the fun begins.

[JSWolf]

But knowing ahead of time means we have more time to decide what to nominate.

[crich70]

Some books have elements of more than one genre so that might make things difficult at times. Like "Somewhere in Time" (by Richard Matheson) for example. It's a love story but has some Sf/fantasy elements as well. If going just by genre I would suggest just the broad strokes as most genre books have many sub-genre variations.

[HomeInMyShoes]

I like Tom coming up with something by whatever means suits his needs that month. I'm with Issybird in that we need to make a more concerted effort to read and discuss. I am there now as long as the books are not too long. Sucking up a good half of my reading effort can be a strain some months.

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by caleb72

This is again letting Tom dictate, but how about not having a clue what the genre/theme of each month is and Tom just selects something. Eg. this month we're going to focus on Urban Fantasy with a twist of Romance etc...

Then we have the nomination and voting process work as usual. That way Tom can be as specific or general as he likes.

I don't know if it would work in practice, but I like the idea of approaching each month not knowing what the theme of the book club read is going to be.

EDIT: Or even a random theme generator. Where we have a group of x themes/genres and a small program just picks one at random. Tom pushes the button each month and then he announces to the team and the fun begins.

I like the idea, but am concerned that we might need to provide a bit more lead time than "This month it's X and the survey is up." Maybe more on the order of "Next month will be X, and the survey will be up in 2 weeks."

[HomeInMyShoes]

Originally Posted by CRussel

I like the idea, but am concerned that we might need to provide a bit more lead time than "This month it's X and the survey is up." Maybe more on the order of "Next month will be X, and the survey will be up in 2 weeks."

For people like me that plan their reading excessively that would be nice.

[JSWolf]

I think it would really help if we did the nominations/voting 1 month in advance to give us more time to read in case the book is long.