New Leaf Information and Book Selections

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Personally, I always check if my library has a book I'm nominating, or at least has the option of adding it. And I'll mention if Overdrive doesn't appear to be an option. But I don't bother with links to generic Overdrive. And I have zero availability of either Freading or Hoopla, so I can't even check those.

I check Overdrive in my libraries, because, except in rare instances, I won't nominate a book I can't borrow. I usually check Freading, Hoopla, and Scribd, even though I don't use them, because I figure access to one of those services eases the sting of the high prices of the books I tend to nominate.

[CRussel]

Keep in mind, Catlady, that for many of us, those additional services are simply not available. So a high priced book will simply not get a vote from me, regardless of whether I would otherwise vote for it. Overdrive I do have. Though my main library is fairly limited, unfortunately.

[CRussel]

By the Way -- I would appreciate it if nominators would include a page count. I prefer Goodreads for that number, but don't actually care where you get it from. But it saves me having to go look it up, which I appreciate!

Thanks.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Keep in mind, Catlady, that for many of us, those additional services are simply not available. So a high priced book will simply not get a vote from me, regardless of whether I would otherwise vote for it. Overdrive I do have. Though my main library is fairly limited, unfortunately.

I know. They're not available to me, either!

Originally Posted by CRussel

By the Way -- I would appreciate it if nominators would include a page count. I prefer Goodreads for that number, but don't actually care where you get it from. But it saves me having to go look it up, which I appreciate!

On my wish list is the inclusion of an original publication date, if possible. I like to know how old a book is.

[Dazrin]

For purely selfish reasons I'd also like to see the page count, original publication year, and author country included. Since I record them on the spreadsheet anything that speeds it up would be nice.

None of it is necessary, just nice to have. GoodReads makes it easy to get all this information anyway.

Also, the spreadsheet and list in this thread have been updated now.

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by Dazrin

For purely selfish reasons I'd also like to see the page count, original publication year, and author country included. Since I record them on the spreadsheet anything that speeds it up would be nice.

None of it is necessary, just nice to have. GoodReads makes it easy to get all this information anyway.

Also, the spreadsheet and list in this thread have been updated now.

I'll do my part -- if folks provide that data, I'll include it in the same line at the end of the nomination as I have been including the page counts. Anything that makes the ongoing maintenance of the club easier for those doing it is appreciated.

[Dazrin]

Thank you, but don't go out of your way. I don't think most people will base anything off them (except page counts) most of the time.

I like to include them in the stats though; it surprises me that we've only read 5 different countries so far. With 16 books from the UK and the US following with 11. The other three countries only have 6 total.

I've added the two new themes and a link to the theme thread in the second post.

[gmw]

I didn't know others were interesting in the first published date. I always look it up for my own purposes, I just haven't bothered to add it to the post up to now.

[Dazrin]

When we started the NLBC almost 3 years ago (!!) I decided I would track at least some of the same information I do for my personal reading since I thought others would like to see some of it. Here's the chart for just the NLBC publication dates:


The club spreadsheet has everything for the NLBC, the Literary Club, and the old MR club too. See the stats tab.

Personally, I've been tracking this for about 10 years and really wish I had done this for the preceding decades of my life. I don't normally post it till the end of the year but you can see previous years from links at the bottom of my 2020 post if you want. The 2019 summary information is pretty typical of what I track.

[gmw]

I had seen those graphs, but since some of the graphs include other details not supplied by the nominations I hadn't really considered expanding my nominations. (eg: We'd need to know what rules you use for things like nationality of the author, because that is not always simple.)

For my own purposes I am mostly interested in the first publication date as a matter of context, and more often than not I also look up the author for similar reasons. It's been a habit for as long as I can remember. I've just never tried to graph the results.

[Catlady]

I look up publication dates as a matter of course when I add books to Calibre; I hate that the metadata shows the date of the e-book edition and compulsively change to the original date.

I never track anything about authors' identities. I don't care.

[Dazrin]

I went through and cleaned up the list post a little and hid the rules / FAQ posts.

I also added a summary of some of the statistics from the spreadsheet for posterity. The statistic that amazes me is that in under 3 years we had almost as many comments as the entire 9+ year run of both the original MRBC and the Literary Club. We had a really good run at this and I think things would still be moving forward except for the craziness that is 2020.

Happy Holidays everyone! 2021 is right around the corner.

Reminder: if you have a NLBC image or link in your signature, you might want to remove it at this point. I had forgotten about it.

[issybird]

Thank you, Dazrin. I loved your stats and can only echo that the NLBC had a fantastic run.

I’m hopeful that there can be some sort of regrouping in 2021, on a less formal basis. First we need to get this dreadful year behind us. Hoping for happy holidays to all, as we look forward to the vaccine and better times ahead.

[CRussel]

@Dazrin: Thank you so much for all you've done for this (and other) clubs. Your stats and lists not only made my job easier, they also provided useful insights into what kinds of books we liked to read, and were just generally interesting. An enormous amount of work, fully appreciated by me, for one.

I'd be open to doing something again in the future. But as issybird says, not In the Time of Covid.

[JSWolf]

When in 2021 might we get back and running?