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[2020] Voting for 10th Mini Poll
Katie wrote: "I really hope western wins, but I'm not hopeful it will. I don't read westerns, but I have a few I have been meaning to read, and I really want the challenge to give me the push to read them. [bo..."
Me too. Although I have read Lonesome Dove already. It was so good, you should just do it.
My favourite time of day is home time, followed by happy hour :) I'm not sure what sky would represent that, but maybe orange/red/yellow and sunsetty?
I love the cover prompts, I could probably do a whole challenge just on cover prompts. My current favourite is "novel", because I hated it when it was suggested, thought it was going to be really hard, and have just discovered it's on so many books and I never noticed. It's a treasure hunt, that's the type of prompt I enjoy most.
I also really like the mystery novel, ensemble cast and non-traditional family. I might upvote 8 for the first time ever.
This is going to be a hard vote for me. At first glance, I have 14 yes votes, so I'm going to have to figure out how to cut out six of them. I haven't really searched in depth, so I am sure I will be able to easily cut a few of them, but I think having to pick six that I don't want out of the 14 will be difficult. While there are a couple I'm not overly excited about, I won't have any down-votes this week.
Only a couple of prompts I don't want this time (I don't read Stephen King books much, and I get the impression we don't have similar tastes in books either), so the biggest question is which ones to I like enough to upvote. I found an ensemble cast list here: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...
There's nothing there that's actually on my TBR, but enough classics I know I can easily find something if it gets voted in.
I haven't usually been voting for prompts that force me to read off my owned TBR, but I may make an exception to vote for 'mystery by POC'. If I only seem to own mysteries by white British people, it's probably time I branched out anyway. :-)
I'm voting for Western because I'd enjoy re-reading one of the old Louis L'Amour books that's been hanging around on my shelves since my teens. If fantasy gets in it will just be a freebie for me, so I'm not voting either way on that one.
I'll throw a vote in for Western, Katie. I don't read them often, but most of the ones suggested in this thread have looked pretty good. I have Lonesome Dove and All the Pretty Horses on my Personal 60 songs list, so I might hold one over for next year if the prompt goes through. The Heart's Invisible Furies would be a good non-traditional family prompt. The main character is adopted (by a man and a woman) but they refuse to acknowledge him as their son. It's a very strange upbringing for him. I'd recommend it.
I'm not so jazzed about the # of the cover prompts, but they should not be too hard to fill. I wonder if I can get playful with the bug prompt and read a book with a Beatle on the cover. That is more my speed.
I really like the prompt list this time around. I'm going to have a hard time deciding what gets an upvote. I really love all the cover prompts. The ensemble cast prompt is also very interesting.
If the "time of day" cover prompt doesn't go through I totally plan to submit it again, reworded to not include "favorite"! I super love it and hate to see it get downvoted just because people don't have a favorite time of day. :(
dalex wrote: "If the "time of day" cover prompt doesn't go through I totally plan to submit it again, reworded to not include "favorite"! I super love it and hate to see it get downvoted just because people don'..."I think that it is a prompt that would benefit from being reworded without "favorite." I'm like some of the other members in that I don't have a favorite time of the day. I do like sky covers but I already having 10 prompts that I want to upvote. The sky one will remain in my middle. The word "favorite" is not enough for me to downvote it but the word keeps it out of my top.
I'm not planning on downvoting the sky prompt... but I would probably be inclined to upvote it if it were simply "a book with a cover that reminds you of the sky". If it gets in I'll try and read it as that and ignore the favourite and time of day bits. Like I joked before, I can always pick a grey cover (I live in Britain, that's a valid sky colour).
Nontraditional FamiliesThe Just City
Annabel
This is How It Always Is
Sister Mine
The Boys from Brazil
A Family by Any Other Name: Exploring Queer Relationships
Everybody Has Everything
Good Me, Bad Me
Before We Were Yours
Tarzan of the Apes
Bohemian Gospel
Straight Parents, Gay Children: Keeping Families Together
Rainbow Relatives: Real-World Stories and Advice on How to Talk to Kids About LGBTQ+ Families and Friends
just some on my list.
I really want to see genre prompts added, and I love that the mystery prompt has something more to it by adding the POC author. I don't prefer mysteries though.And I'm not inclined to vote for fantasy either because it is also not one of my preferred genres, though I end up reading a bit of it, but mostly because we had speculative fiction as a genre prompt this year. I'd like to see something different. I wouldn't be surprised if it won though because I think there are a lot of fantasy fans in the group.
I agree in retrospect that I could have worded it a little differently because I forgot how some people feel about the word favorite, and about sticking as literal to the prompt as possible. It was just kind of thrown together last second after a sudden burst of inspiration looking at some covers on my TBR and realizing how many of them reminded me of the sky. It's hard for me to even pick just ONE favorite because it does somewhat depend on what my situation is (like if it's a work day or on the weekend). I was planning on picking from one of my favorites though. If it doesn't make it through I would love to see it resubmitted in a way that works for more people!
Great, under-rated, classic black mystery author: Chester Himes. He didn’t think of himself as a mystery author and would possibly be annoyed that books like A Rage in Harlem are his legacy, but that’s the way things go I guess.I also loved this detective mystery by a Hong Kong author: The Borrowed by Chan Ho-Kei. I want him to write more!!
I'm not a fantasy fan, but I can find a fantasy that will work for me. I'm hoping the mystery by POC doesn't make it, because I don't care for mysteries at all. I wish the POC was paired with some other genre. I like the non-traditional family prompt and the western. I agree that the sky prompt would work for me if reworded but doesn't as it stands.
A few websites that list books for non traditional familieshttps://io9.gizmodo.com/the-most-wond...
https://quillandquire.com/review/the-...
https://www.familyequality.org/family...
http://www.yalsa.ala.org/thehub/2014/...
You can see a list of fantasy subgenres HERE at Worlds Without End. If you click on the "+" symbol it will give you a definition of that subgenre and if you click on the name of the subgenre below the definition it will give you a list of books that have been tagged that subgenre.Fantasy is not all wizards and goblins and quests! It's a HUGE genre with a ton of options.
I had to post the poll a little early today because I won't be available by computer or phone at 4:30pm EDT today. Hope you guys don't mind getting to vote a little earlier than expected.
Katie wrote: "I had to post the poll a little early today because I won't be available by computer or phone at 4:30pm EDT today. Hope you guys don't mind getting to vote a little earlier than expected."Hooray! I won't be by a computer this afternoon, either, so I can vote now. :)
Definitely don’t mind voting early. I haven’t seen any value in the enforced wait times.
4 up and 4 down for me, but lots I would be happy with.
The extra wait times have been helpful for me because this is the first time I’m researching the prompts before voting. That said, 12 hours would probably do me, rather than the first day.
Well, that was a tough vote. I ended up with 5 up votes and 3 down votes, but it took me a while to decide if I was going to go for 6 and 2 instead.I picked the fantasy book because it's a genre that I generally enjoy and it fits with many of the books I'd like to read next year. I also kind of surprised myself and voted for the Most Read This Week in a favourite genre. I wasn't sure about that one at first because those lists are always changing and I thought the logistics might be a bit annoying if the book I picked at the time wasn't on the page anymore, but the more I thought about the prompt, the more I liked it. I think it's a great way to get in a genre prompt that is open enough that people can choose what they want, and it's very flexible.
I also went for the non-traditional family and ensemble cast prompts because those are suggestions I've loved in the past, that I don't think ever made it through. And even though there are several title prompts already, I also really loved the honorific in the title suggestion since there are so many books I'm excited about that would fit.
The western was an immediate downvote for me. While I agree that this is a challenge and some people's goal is to be pushed out of their comfort zone, I've read westerns before in several challenges and haven't liked any. I also spent over an hour looking at options in case it did get in, and literally none of them appeal to me. I'll find something if needed, but it was the one prompt I felt most strongly against this time around. I also downvoted the word "novel" on the cover because that doesn't seem to be very common here and it seemed difficult to research. At the last minute, I also downvoted the half-face covers, even though I have a couple of books that could work for it, because it was the one I was least excited about of the remaining prompts.
I mostly upvoted - generally all the prompts to add diversity and the genres. The western one will be a bit more challenging for me, but I’m okay with that. I too wasn’t happy to see it on the Book Riot challenge but then loved the book I read.
Since I don’t particularly have a favourite time of day, I just view that as a chance to pick a cover of the sky that I like. I didn’t upvote it because there were others I like more, but I don’t dislike the prompt.
Chinook wrote: "The extra wait times have been helpful for me because this is the first time I’m researching the prompts before voting. That said, 12 hours would probably do me, rather than the first day."Yeah I can understand that. Some polls I need to do more research or just sleep on it. But we have five days to vote, so that’s four days to research. The extra day ahead of it isn’t helpful for me (especially since I tend to vote with my gut response - my vote is one of hundreds so I don’t agonize over it too long). I realize some people appreciate the extra day, but I’m always too excited to see the results, I hate waiting longer! :-)
Please don’t laugh at me, but I have a question about the fantasy genre prompt. Would things like The Odyssey or The Iliad count?(I’m considering resurrecting my plan to read only books published in the eighteenth century or earlier for next year’s challenge.)
Bryony wrote: "Please don’t laugh at me, but I have a question about the fantasy genre prompt. Would things like The Odyssey or The Iliad count?(I’m considering resurrecting my plan to r..."
I would count them. They both show up on the main GR page as Fantasy.
Ha! It seems so odd to include them to me (classical archaeology major) but I can see the logic in doing so, in that the help of the gods is certainly fantastical. Though, wouldn’t that logic leave the bible open to be categorized as fantasy?
Thanks Jillian, I guess plenty of people think of them as fantasy if that’s how they’re shelved on Goodreads.Chinook, it definitely felt odd to me to categorise them as fantasy but I guess it does also make sense. I realised there are probably lots of classics that also have elements of the fantastic in them, things like The Epic of Gilgamesh, Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, even The Tempest!
I tend to think that if a logical argument can be made for a book fitting a challenge prompt, then even if I don’t actually agree with it, I’m still willing to count it because why not? So I will continue not considering them fantasy, but I think you can totally do so for the prompt because the reason makes sense.
I guess I distinguish between fantasy and mythology, but I doubt you could get anything more fantastic than The Odyssey. An interesting option I would never have thought of on my own.
I wouldn't consider the Iliad etc as fantasy as literary genre (that's not to say they don't have fantastical elements), but you can of course choose what to do. One of the oldest examples considered fantasy is E.T.A. Hoffmann's 'Das fremde Kind' (the Stranger/ Strange Child in English I think) from 1817.
But you could absolutely tweak the prompt if you have set a goal like that, Bryony.
6 upvotes and 2 downvotes for me. I was going to downvote half a face and silhouette until I checked out my TBR list and had heaps of choices for both so upvoted them both.
I’m not a huge fan of cover prompts - I’m all about the contents not the packaging! I’ll probably upvote mystery by a Person of Colour, book where main character is an immigrant and the non-traditional family. I’ll be checking to see if any of the cover prompts appear really restrictive. If not I probably won’t downvote anything and just wait and see what the group decides.
Finally went 5/3, but I won't cry even if the ones I downvoted get in.
I only down voted 2. The cover with less than 5 colours, it seemed to easy, and Steven King. I know I am in the minority but I really dislike his writing.
You aren't alone, Anastasia. I don't like King either and I voted that one down.
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I guess the question here is how do you define a non-traditional family. A lot of people would describe a single parent household as non-traditional although for many its standard. It's a question of perspective. And what about the urban family many of us have made of the people chosen to be your family because of emotional or physical distance of your traditional family, Plus, there is a love in literature for orphans like Anne of Green Gables and Oliver.
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I'm not a fan of Stephen King's writing , but he is a man who bought an extra house just to hold his library, I think he reads enough our tastes will overlap. He reads at some insane rate, which is probably why he writes such long books, he thinks the rest of us read as fast as him!
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I would vote for a sky prompt! (I neither up or down voted this poll's time of day prompt)
Pamela wrote: "Raquel wrote: "Only a couple of prompts I don't want this time (I don't read Stephen King books much, and I get the impression we don't have similar tastes in books either), so the biggest question..."That theory makes sense, but looking at all of the lists I found that almost none of the books I'd already read were ones I liked, and the ones I'd heard of and hadn't read I'd never had any interest in trying. And none of that makes me want to go check out the ones I'd never heard of!
Emily wrote: "For me, non-traditional means anything that is not the married, hetero couple with 2 kids. So single parents, LGBTQIA+, friends-as-family, grandparents raising kids... all of those would fall under..."If you look at it like that, books about large families would qualify too. (Which wouldn't have occurred to me--perspective again, I'm surrounded by a lot of large families so it feels very normal to me.)
Cheaper by the Dozen comes to mind, but I'm sure there are plenty of others.
Pamela wrote: "Raquel wrote: "Only a couple of prompts I don't want this time (I don't read Stephen King books much, and I get the impression we don't have similar tastes in books either), so the biggest question..."I thought his list was pretty slanted towards generally mysteries, horror and thrillers. There were exceptions, but it definitely had a feel to it.
While I’m sure I could read something off the list and be entertained, it doesn’t interest me too much. I don’t like how male-centric it is either. It was my one downvote.
I voted for both silhouette and half-a-face in hopes one of them will make it! Silhouettes don’t have to be people or faces, they can also be objects so it would be a fun scavenger hunt as well. I hope ensemble cast or non-traditional family make it as well for some character prompts on the list.
I actually really like the “novel” on the cover prompt - it’s actually super common on my TBR list but also fun to hunt for.
I was going to downvote the sky prompt, because I just don’t like prompts that are about individual preferences. But I would like books with sky covers in general, so I left it as a neutral prompt, and if it gets submitted without the “favorite” part, I would vote for it.
Hannah wrote: "Does anyone have any books they would recommend for the non-traditional family prompt? I really want to vote for this, but most of the novels I’ve found are either YA or younger."Baba Dunja's Last Love might qualify! The "family" is a group of elderly people who return to Chernobyl to live out the rest of their lives in their hometown. There's also a wedding in it, so two of the characters technically DO become family during the course of the book :)
I'm really excited about this list (I realize I keep saying that every week.) The Stephen King recommendation is right up my alley anyway, and the sky prompt is so creative. I'm really hoping the Western gets in! (True Grit is another great selection, and short, if you're still looking.)
Stephen King recommends (and blurbs) a ton of novels from a lot of different genres. I recently came across this bookshelf that has 1,017 books supposedly recommended by King. I didn't vote for the prompt because I'd rather have a more open "recommended by a celebrity" prompt but I just wanted to point out that this prompt does not mean you have to read a horror novel.
Around the Year in 52 Books
Books mentioned in this topic
A Chance to Die: The Life and Legacy of Amy Carmichael (other topics)True Grit (other topics)
Baba Dunja's Last Love (other topics)
Cheaper by the Dozen (other topics)
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Chester Himes (other topics)Chan Ho-Kei (other topics)
Louis L'Amour (other topics)
Attica Locke (other topics)
Alafair Burke (other topics)
More...
Crazy Rich Asians (extended families)
Hey Ladies! (8 best friends)
The Ensemble (4 musicians)
The Immortalists (4 siblings)
The Night Circus
Little Fires Everywhere (2 families)
All We Ever Wanted (3 people)
I haven't read these yet, so I'm not positive they would work, but I'm thinking:
And Then There Were None
The Thousandth Floor
Big Little Lies