Literary The MR Literary Club 2017-2018 Categories Nominations

[sun surfer]

It is time to choose the categories that the MR Literary Club will use during our July 2017-June 2018 cycle!

Nominations will be open for six days. Each lit club member may nominate one category. The category should be one of the following:

-From among our previous categories (listed below)
-A specific as-yet-unused region or time period (also listed below, and explained below)
-A new or altered category, so long as it is approved and is simple and literary with just a title and no special rules to follow

To nominate a category, simply post your nomination.

All approved nominations will become categories for our next cycle with no need for a vote or support from others.

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The upcoming year will be special because it’s the last year we will use Region and Time Period in their current forms. We are taking a break from Rotating months until the following year after the current rotating cycle is complete; since we have three more months of Rotating to go that leaves us with nine months of other categories this year. After these nominations are over, we will fill any remaining months with Region and Time Period.

We have two as-yet-unused time periods left and seven unused regions. The last month of each of these two categories in the upcoming year will be a ‘Finale’ with no usual starter vote and will instead have eligible every remaining option available to nominate books from. We may get through both time periods but we will almost certainly have a mixed Region Finale.

Even though any extra months will be filled with Region and Time Period, you may still choose to use your nomination to nominate Region or Time Period if you’d like to ensure one more month of either before they’re completed. As well, if you’d like to ensure a specific region or time period gets its own month (and isn’t included in a ‘mixed’ Finale month) you may choose to use your nomination to nominate a specific as-yet-unused region or time period listed below. If a specific region or time period is thus nominated, when that month comes along we won’t have a starter vote since the winning option will have already been chosen.

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You may nominate a category that’s already been nominated if you’d like to see it more than once during the next year. This includes not only Region and Time Period but all regular categories. The only exception is that specific regions and time periods can’t be nominated more than once (for example, ‘Region’ can be nominated more than once but ‘Region- Japan’ can only be nominated once).

You may change your nomination at any time before nominations are over, so there isn’t a need to wait and see what others nominate first. This means that even after you nominate a category, once you see how other nominations are shaping up you may decide to nominate a different category and that is fine. You can change your nomination as many times as you like, but please do it by posting a new post rather than editing an existing one. When nominations are over I will use the last eligible posted nomination of each member.

Since these nominations are going straight to categories for next year, only those who have participated in the club at least semi-regularly recently-ish are eligible to nominate. If anyone is uncertain you can ask us here or PM me but if you’ve volunteered for a rotating month in the last year or so, or if you’ve discussed a few books with us in the last half year or so, or if you’re one of our longstanding members returning, then you’re fine to go.

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For reference, eligible previous categories and unused regions and time periods are listed below. Rotating and Lottery, the only two other categories we’ve ever used, are ineligible to be nominated and aren’t listed. Journey around the World requires a list of every country we’ve read a book from and anyone wanting to nominate it will need to also provide a list of said countries with the nomination.

Eligible Previous Categories
Biographies & Memoirs
Contemporary
Highly Challenging
Journey around the World
Non-Fiction
Obscure
Open
Plays
Poetry
Region
Short
Time Period

Eligible Specific Regions and Time Periods
Region- Ireland & The U.K.
Region- Japan
Region- The Korean Peninsula, Mongolia & China
Region- South Asia (India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, etc.)
Region- The South Pacific (Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, etc.)
Region- Southeast Europe (Greece, Italy, Turkey, etc.)
Region- Sub Saharn Africa (South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, etc.)
Time Period- 1501-1800
Time Period- 1941-1960


Any questions, feel free to ask.

So, what categories will we be reading from in the next year? The floor is now open!

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Nominations closed. Final results-

Time Period
Biographies & Memoirs
Non-Fiction
Youth Fiction
Open

[sun surfer]

I'll nominate Time Period for now, so that hopefully we'll get both remaining time periods in during the next year to finish out that category naturally. I may change that though depending on how nominations shape up. I'm interested to see what others nominate!

[Bookworm_Girl]

I'll nominate Biographies and Memoirs.

[bfisher]

I nominate Non-Fiction.

[fantasyfan]

I would like to nominate Youth Fiction. Perhaps the following paragraph will give an idea of what that category contains:

"Genres for young fiction, and in particular YA fiction (young adult, also known as youth or juvenile fiction), span most of those covered by adult fiction. What distinguishes them from adult fiction is that the main characters are usually children or teens dealing with teen issues."

This category has works of very fine literary quality. Examples would be
Tom's Midnight Garden and Penelope Lively's remarkable A Stitch In Time but there are many others of equal quality.

[sun surfer]

About a day and a half left for category nominations.

As it currently stands, our roster for next year would look like this:

-3 Rotating
-1 Biographies & Memoirs
-1 Non-Fiction
-1 Youth Fiction
-2 Time Period
-4 Region

[Spinnenmonat]

I nominate Open.

[sun surfer]

And category nominations are now closed until next year!

We ended up with six unique categories for the year (Biographies & Memoirs, Non-Fiction, Youth Fiction, Open, Time Period, Region), which just so happens to be the exact same amount as previous years. It is also almost the same categories as last year except that Youth Fiction will be replacing Contemporary.

This leaves us with three extra months for the upcoming year (the three that are usually Rotating) that we will fill with one additional Time Period which finishes that category out naturally, and two additional Region with the last being a finale with the final five regional options all eligible to have books nominated from.

I'm looking forward to the year and thanks to everyone who nominated.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Thanks for all you do to keep the club running smoothly, sun surfer!

Somewhere you asked about length of time for voting, but I don't remember where. I like 4 days because it gives more people a chance for the time period to spread over the weekend.

[sun surfer]

Thanks, Bookworm_Girl! The discussion on voting length is in the welcome thread, so I'll repost your thoughts there to keep it all in one place for future reference.