Nominations for the December/January group read are now open. READ CAREFULLY.

[Ann]

Many of the suggestions sound good to me. I'm new to the group so am not up to date on the lists before this year. I'd like to nominate Stieg Larsson

[Kim]

If you look at the pictures of the books, she meant Michael Connelly not Connolly. It was a repeating typo, I think.

[Patricia]

I noticed that John Grisham has not been mentioned. I've only read one of his books although my sister has devoured all of them. I don't know which one to pick. Eenie, meenie, minee, mo. Ok, I've chosen to nominate The Testament by John Grisham.

[Sue]

John Grisham

[Gerald]

James Rollin

[Michael]

Fred Vargas

[Gisela]

Friedrich Durrenmatt, difficult to find because of the umlaut, but one of his best is The Pledge

[Renee]

I would love to read Eliabeth George

[Renata]

I would like to suggest one of these:
Truman Capote
Henning Mankell
Jo Nesbø

[Barbara]

Linwood Barclay

[L.C.]

I'm going for Robert Crais. I really enjoy his work! I like your idea of nominating an author.

[Tom]

Kim wrote: "If you look at the pictures of the books, she meant Michael Connelly not Connolly. It was a repeating typo, I think."

I know what she intended. I just wanted to clear up any confusion. I'd hate to end up having to read Making It Happen in Public Service: Devolution in Wales as a Case Study.

[Kim]

Well, I think that's an outside shot, as we will be narrowing down the authors after the nominations close, and I think that author won't make the cut, but I see your point, Tom. That tome is not high on my reading list, either.

[Aaron]

I'd like to nominate Joseph Finder.

[M.L.]

Tom Clancy

[Nancy, Co-Moderator]

Please, people, just make one author choice here. I'm not going to accept nominations from people who list multiple authors in his/her post. Thanks.

[Kim]

I apologize. Got too excited about sharing new authors (to me) with the group. OK, so I will just go with Susan Hill this time around.

[Leonard]

I nominate The Alienist by Caleb Carr.

[Lula]

I nominate Sarah Waters. I was delighted with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival treatment of "Fingersmith" and have just begun "Paying Guests." Gorgeous writing, suspenseful.

[Nancy, Co-Moderator]

Leonard wrote: "I nominate The Alienist by Caleb Carr."

Umm, that's what the group is reading right now.

[Nancy, Co-Moderator]

Lula wrote: "I nominate Sarah Waters. I was delighted with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival treatment of "Fingersmith" and have just begun "Paying Guests." Gorgeous writing, suspenseful."


She is one of my all-time favorite authors. Her The Little Stranger is a great book, and I loved her Tipping the Velvet as well.

[Theona]

I Nominate Val McDermid. really good author and I recommend the Tony Hill/Carol Jordan series as a great place to start.

[Patricia]

Barbara wrote: "Linwood Barclay"

Linwood Barclay is very good. I read one of his books for the first time about 3 months ago. I couldn't put it down.

[Joan]

Deon Meyer

[CHenry]

I can't wait to read something by Tom Vater

[Rita]

I nominate Mary Higgins Clark

[Lizanne]

Tim Johnston

[Kim]

You know, with all the nominations, it looks like we could do this more often, and possibly in different ways. Perhaps we could do it in addition to the monthly read, or we could have a time when we read someone who has never been read by the group before, or someone who has not been read in a very long time. I am relatively new to the group, but I am just impressed with how enthusiastically everyone is responding.

[Randi]

Robert Crais or Michael Connelly would be awesome.

[Kim]

Warning, warning. Nancy said comments with more than 1 author mentioned will not be included in the nominations...although I believe both of the authors have been mentioned separately in the thread. Will it be Harry Bosch (or some of his other protagonists) or Elvis Cole?

[Sofie]

I'd like to nominate Daniel Pennac^^

[Susanna - Censored by GoodReads]

I'd like to nominate Rex Stout.

[Randi]

Kim wrote: "Warning, warning. Nancy said comments with more than 1 author mentioned will not be included in the nominations...although I believe both of the authors have been mentioned separately in the thread..."

Yes Kim, I wasn't actually nominating any author, just agreeing with both of those nominations. Just commenting. I can remove the post if it's nominations only, no chatter.

[Nancy, Co-Moderator]

Randi wrote: "Kim wrote: "Warning, warning. Nancy said comments with more than 1 author mentioned will not be included in the nominations...although I believe both of the authors have been mentioned separately i..."

Chatter is totally fine. It doesn't bother me at all. Heck, I'm one of the world's best chatter boxes when you catch me in a great mood.

Here's my dilemma. I don't think we realized what we were getting ourselves into when the idea of nominating authors came up among the moderators. We rarely get this sort of response when we call for nominations for titles, so I don't think we were expecting this huge blitz of authors. Even if I close the nominations this minute, there are enough names to make the poll too unwieldy to work with. By the way, that is precisely what I'm going to do after I get some feedback from you all.

So -- I need advice here. Can anyone come up with some fair way to get the number of authors down that would make a poll work in this situation and still represent the nominations already made? Any and all suggestions are beyond welcome. And as I said, I really do have to stop taking names for now so please don't make any more nominations.

[Thomas]

Could you eliminate authors whose books have already been read in the last 5 years?

[Jeannine K Lockwood]

Joseph Kanon

[[deleted user]]

Maybe go with author last names beginning with A thru H then next month I thru P, etc.

[Bob]

Nancy wrote: "Your moderators have decided to do something very different this time around so please read carefully before posting. Nominations are open through December 8th.

For the December/January group rea..."

I'll nominate Hanne Wilhelmsen

[Randi]

One of my groups has the authors/book "seconded". And the top 10 (or whatever # you want to choose) that have the most "seconds", are in the poll. I hope this makes sense. So, in other words, my original comment about R. Crais and M. Connelly, I would have changed to:
I second Robert Crais.

[Shivam]

John Grisham

[Bill]

I like the suggestions that we actually knock off any authors that have been read over the past five years (or however long we've been doing the group reads. And if enough are seconded, maybe those could be selected if the numbers are still fairly high. It does depend how many have been seconded mind you. I'll go through the list with both in mind to see how many we have left, if you want Nancy.

[Bill]

Well, Nancy, I went through all the nominations for you and these are the authors we've never read before (still quite a few and many I've never heard of) -

- John Connolly
- Jonathan Kellerman
- Craig Johnson
- William Kent Krueger
- Gilly Macmillan
- Edgar Allan Poe
- Michael Robotham
- M.J. Carter
- John Lescroart
- Joe R. Lansdale
- Andrew E. Kaufman
- Jordan Dane
- Sandra Parshall
- Pierre Lemaitre
- Susan Hill
- Nevada Barr
- J.A. Jance
- Fred Vargas
- Friedrich Durrenmatt
- Elizabeth George
- Joseph Finder
- Sarah Waters
- Deon Meyer
- Tom Vater
- Mary Higgins Clark
- Tim Johnston
- Daniel Pennac
- Rex Stout
- Joseph Kanon, and
- Hanne Wilhelmsen (couldn't find her code)

Unfortunately, there weren't enough seconders to make that worth filtering. Anyway, the list is for your consideration. If you want to give everyone another day to second any of them and see what comes up, without any new nominees, maybe that might help filter a bit more. Happy December!! :0)

[Manju]

Bill... what about John grisham...? multiple people hsve nominated john grisham.

[Bill]

We have read John Grisham in the past. I was just vetting for those who haven't been read before. It's Nancy's Quiz; I was just offering a way to make the list a bit smaller.

[Nancy, Co-Moderator]

Sorry -- it's 1:30 am here on the East coast and I actually just got home. Bill, I'm beyond okay with your idea of limiting the authors to those the group has never read before.

Apologies if this upsets anyone, but everyone here who nominated someone should understand that there are simply too many choices for this to work out in any good way this time around.

So I will ask again that people please stop making nominations for the upcoming group read. We will limit ourselves to the people from the list which Bill has so kindly put together.

[L.C.]

How about if you include only the authors who have been nominated more than X number of times? Then we can all vote on the top nominations only.

[Nancy, Co-Moderator]

Here's what we'll do.

Bill has suggested that I offer you the chance to second the names on the list he's put together above to try to further whittle it down, so now's your chance.

Second your choice of an author who's on the list (and please limit yourself to only ONE) and tomorrow I will tally the results and that will be what we use for the poll. Hopefully this will solve the problem.

Again, apologies -- we just never figured on this sort of response!

[Tom]

I second John Connolly.

To reiterate, I have nominated Joe R. Lansdale and seconded John Connolly.

[Nancy, Co-Moderator]

Got it. Thank you, Tom.

[M.L.]

I'll second Rex Stout