SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion
Group Business
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Poll: Should We Allow YA Books as BOTM?
And of course, anything you want to add here in public, please do so! :)
Started to fill this out and then questioned everything I’d put in there. Need to think on it I guess.
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Nope it’s not confusing - I think it’s great. I’m just waffling in my decision
I judt wrote a long ass comment and managed to swipe some way that made it all disappear. Yay me!I think what I was saying was I don’t think it would be fair to our younger members to not allow YA books. We are all voting for the books, we could just not vote for them, and yet we do. I also think anyone should have a voice. No one is forced to read the group read picks afterall, right?
My experience is, being a member of this group has been a learning curve for me, I’ve realized what I actually like and what I dislike, but only because I’ve red good and bad, otherwise how would I know? It has to include things that were not for me personally. I don’t see any problem with this, and I’d prefer it stays open for any genre to leave room for most people.
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Well said, Dawn! I stopped doing the poll because I didn't like the "pick which book is in which genre" part. I don't think that part is necessary for the poll.
I don't think it's a good idea to limit books based on age range/genre.
We may use the genre and the generic flaws from the genre as the reason why we don't like something but that's not really the issue. The reason why we don't enjoy reading a book has to do with how the story is written.
I agree with Dawn. I read and enjoyed quite a lot of books meant for younger audiences (my son is 10 and I still read aloud to him, but that’s not the only reason) and I’m sure out of 26k members there are some who are actually the target audience. I didn’t mark my opinion for categorizing the lists of books because I’ve only read one of the books listed! (Now you know which vote is mine!!)
Thanks for putting this together!
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Diane haha no worries! We thought it likely that folks wouldn't have read all of those, or have ideas of what each constitutes. Afterwards, if there's anything we really need to investigate closely, we can look at (again, anonymous!) each individual response and use that to determine what books that person likely has no opinion one way or another about.
I think Soo meant the questions about what age group the list of books are. You can skip those and just answer the other questions if you want to!
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Anna wrote: "I think Soo meant the questions about what age group the list of books are. You can skip those and just answer the other questions if you want to!"Thanks Anna, I also stopped doing the poll because of those questions. Completed it now!
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I think perhaps a different selection of books to pick from would work. Some of those books I'd never heard of. I'd heard of/read Blue Sword, Gideon the Ninth and Golden Compass. I was aware of Catfishing and Shadowshaper because they were recent book club books (I didn't read them)
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What Dawn said!(I have yet to open the poll ... just woke up and went through my notifications)
ETA: did the poll. I had to skip the selections as well, cause I have no idea what NA is ^^' and I never understood the line between MG and YA.
Imho we limit our choices too strongly when we don't allow all age ranges in the polls. I have read books that where labelled as for younger readers that blew my mind and were a lot better than a lot of adult books (i.e. Skywards-series or Inkworld-series). It would be a shame if such books didn't get a chance in our polls.
What would help, though, were if the members who voted for a book would show up in the discussion to balance out the strange correlation between most-voted-for / negatively-percieved book.
I once heart Brandon Sanderson define the difference between MG and YA as "In MG, adults are just totally useless, whereas in YA, they are an obstacle". 😄 I also agree with Dawn.
I'm also happy to read MG and YA or NA - many of them work just as well for adults and have been my among my top reads (e.g. Skyward and Truthwitch come to mind).
And the danger of us choosing a dud is present in every genre!
In addition, there seem to be a lot of people voting for (and also reading) BOTM picks who are not the type to then also participate in the discussion, perhaps they're shy, perhaps they're a bit intimidated by some adults strongly attacking their favorite books and don't want to defend them, perhaps they just prefer to read but not write stuff themselves. And that's fine! E.g. when you look at our group member's ratings for Shadowshaper, the majority is 3-5 stars (you can see this by clicking "activity" under the book in the group page). The average rating of people participating in the discussion was 2.9 (still an okay "I liked it" rating), but there's a noticeable difference to the less vocal part of the community.
I'd say being less vocal about your support of a book shouldn't mean that your opinion doesn't count or that we should artificially limit what people are allowed to nominate or vote on. Obviously, not every book will be to everyone's taste, but nobody's forced to read the group read, and sometimes we also discover unexpected favorites by reading outside of our comfort zone, something we didn't expect to like.
And I like the variety: sometimes we'll read something that will appeal more to women on average, sometimes something that will appeal more to older people, sometimes something that appeals more to younger people (or to parents looking for books to read with their kids). With two BOTMs per month plus buddy-reads, there's always something for everyone.
Filled in the survey.I have not read many of the titles so I just clicked on the ones I read.
I used to avoid YA if possible but in the last few years I found lots of very good YA books that I'll keep recommend to adults. So for me let's keep the YA or NA or NSBITIIA (Not Sure But I Think It Is Adult).
Agree with Eva, there's always Buddy Reads for losing books anyway.
I'm lately trying to read more adult books because a lot of recommended books on Youtube are YA, so you end up buying and reading too much YA. So I am fine with this group reading mainly 'pure' adult fantasy and sci-fi. At the same time there are great YA books out there so I always end up reading YA too. There are groups who also have different BOTM in the YA and adult categories so it would be an idea to separate them perhaps. I read very little Middle Grade and I usually don't count what I read for my children on Goodreads, there is often the problem that Middle grade in English has not been translated to German so I rarely can pick up recommendations on Goodreads.I mostly didn't vote on the book categories because I have read few of the titles.
I think, on average, I prefer adult SFF to YA, but there have been YA books I've enjoyed (Harry Potter series, Hunger Games) so it's tough to categorically rule them out. I equate it to music -- I generally don't listen to country music or heavy metal, but I would probably enjoy the best songs that those genres have to offer. But if I'm driving somewhere those wouldn't be the stations I'd tune into on the radio to pass the time. So, yeah, not sure where that gets me exactly, maybe fine with things as they are?
One more thing -- I haven't read all the books in the poll, but of the ones I've read I've had a wide range of star ratings:** - Shadowshaper, Ghost Bride
*** - Golden Compass
**** - Catfishing on Catnet
***** - Raven and the Reindeer
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I will head towards the curmudgeon part of the spectrum. Although I think hard and fast rules excluding a specific type of book are not a good idea, I would prefer we read far less YAWe used to have an unwritten rule banning YA and the mods sort of quashed books they felt were unacceptable in the nominations and I thought the selections were great.
There are so many other groups that cater to YA and YA+Sci-fi that I feel like it would be easy to get a YA fix elsewhere. This is one of only a couple of active groups that are mainly focused on adult sci-fi.
I certainly don't want to alienate younger readers but maybe it is our (this groups) job to provide the next step for those younger readers.
I am completely bored by 95% of YA. Loved Harry Potter, loved the Golden Compass would not want either of them to be books of the month.
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On the other hand, I don't want to rule the genre out completely, because there are books filed as YA that are more adult than young adult, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. And I am not completely against reading YA books and open to pleasant surprises.
Maybe we can find a solution along the lines of 'YA nominations are fine every other month/every three months', or something similar? Or an additional group read every X months explicitly for YA or books written for a younger audience in general?
An additional YA read every 3/4 months would be a good idea and therefore no YA books in the other pools.
Ines wrote: "I'm more with Hank on this, I like this group because there are not so many YA books read around here. Most of the other groups, especially in the fantasy genre, are 80% or more YA, which is what I..."What kinds of groups are you in? I'm in about 8 other SFF groups here on GR and apart from this one, NONE of them read any YA. :-D
Edit: never mind, I've found them with the GR search now. :-)
As usual, I find myself in complete agreement w/ Hank. While I struggle with binary questions like "yes" or "no" and absolutes like "never"; in general YA and I don't get along. I've enjoyed more than a few YA books, but I'm not interested in filling that empty space. I don't want to expand my knowledge of YA selections. That said, I can always skip a monthly read. Choice is a good thing...but for emphasis a poem that I made up on the spot: I'm not interested in YA books
Don't want them in the food (for thought) that this group cooks
Don't want them in the soup
Don't want to read them in this group
Don't want them to be part of the book club stew
Don't want to read YA books...except when I do (which is sometimes)
or one month with nothing but YA?
Monica wrote: "As usual, I find myself in complete agreement w/ Hank. While I struggle with binary questions like "yes" or "no" and absolutes like "never"; in general YA and I don't get along. I've enjoyed more t..."Ok, this is hilarious! Thanks for the laugh and snorts, Monica.
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Lol, despite of the funny poem I'm still for letting our members vote for whatever they want to vote for. (Maybe we could restrict votes to threads though, instead of the monthly polls which get more ghost voters.) E.g. I generally don't like retellings. Don't want to read them, ever. None of them! Nor do I like near-future Scifi - ew! Nor magical realism, usually.
But: I still very much support making them BOTM if the majority here votes for them and wants to read them.
Rereading Eva's comment about rating difference, do we know the demographics of this group? I often asked that in every group I am in. Definitely not asking the mods to do this, but I am curious on the age range of the active members vis a vis the active poll voters (not necessarily active members), and whether it affect the BOTM selection.If YA books often came out as BOTM winners (and previously, got significant amount of seconds in the nomination period), wouldn't that mean the YA audience is also big here? and does it have anything to do with the above mentioned age range between the two groups.
Just musing. I am so curious about the poll result! I love stats ;D
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Eva wrote: "Maybe we could restrict votes to threads though, instead of the monthly polls which get mo..."It is an option but poor Anna and Allison had to tally a lot of votes. Might work for a much smaller group since I do that in the group I mod-ed (only 1/10 of SFFBC in size). We don't send reminders to members. If they want to nominate and vote they will have to pay attention to threads the mods post regularly early in the month. Also, we put the names of the voters in front, the first posts of the threads, and in the shelf description so it's all out there for everyone to see. Therefore we have better guarantee of participation of those who vote. However, only for smaller groups.
Allison wrote: "II'm thinking I might even make a powerpoint for y'all haha"wow, such dedication, we don't deserve you folks :((
seriously though, put cats and dogs in there.
I think Hank vocalized what I was struggling with. A blanket no seems like not a great idea... as does the matter of what counts and who decides that. Like I know Ten thousand doors is claimed to be adult but to me it felt more YA.. good (IMO) YA but still YA. And City of Brass in this months poll I think is supposed to be adult but in reading it feels like YA/NA.And I’d hate to alienate anyone that enjoys it and might participate in discussion as I don’t always have time to participate in BOTM and will happily skip whatever doesn’t appeal to me.
I hissed like an angry vampire when I read the title of this thread. I am extremely against limiting books by an arbitrary "genre" that doesn't have concrete parameters.My biggest problem with this is that as far as I know there is no official definition of Young Adult when it comes to literature. So there could be disagreement about whether or not a book is even YA to add into the nomination confusion. It might even cause people to not nominate something that would have worked because they assumed it was YA even though it would have been perfect for the theme.
I would never want the mods to feel anxiety over the group picks, and it is definitely not their fault if the group generally doesn't like a group read.
Really I just hate the idea of excluding books. I'm always of the opinion that variety is good, and limiting our selection is not something I would be happy with. I've appreciated the effort by the mods and the group in general to bring new and different books to our attention and I wouldn't want to see that diminished.
Bobby wrote: "I hissed like an angry vampire"Haha, thanks for waking me up with a laugh :D
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As for defining YA (I know this is not Sword and Laser) Veronica Roth gave the best definition I’ve ever heard in this interview: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/....
Melanie wrote: "As for defining YA (I know this is not Sword and Laser) Veronica Roth gave the best definition I’ve ever heard in this interview: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...."Would it be possible, that you note down the respective quote? I'd be interested to know it, but I have an inbuild aversion against listening to podcasts ^^' (don't ask ...)
I am good for allowing ya once a quarter. There are some really good ones out there.
It's OK if we don't like a book. If there is a lot of buzz about a book, reading it and having a contrary opinion are not a bad thing.I generally prefer the intelligence and flexibility of thinking people (both poll voters and mods) to an unnecessary rule. Most things in life are too complex to be managed well by a rule consisting of a sentence or two. The current rules provide enough structure for us to be a coherent interest group.
A lot of dissatisfaction is really about disliking how others are voting. We are a huge group, so a lot of people are going to be disappointed no matter what we do.
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"A YA book treats adolescence as if the character is moving forward trough time as an adolescent. And an adult book looks back on adolescence even if its about a young character. So you can kind of sense that adult authorial hand in an adult book about a younger character."
"These categories are only useful until they're not ... Is it a good book or not?"
Using this definition I can see the lack of appeal of YA because in general teenagers are self-centered and whinny. You want to slap your adult sense into them.
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Chris wrote: "I generally prefer the intelligence and flexibility of thinking people (both poll voters and mods) to an unnecessary rule. Most things in life are too complex to be managed well by a rule consisting of a sentence or two. The current rules provide enough structure for us to be a coherent interest group"Agreed.
It's a fact that the majority of members in a group are not going to be "active" in posting. That doesn't mean that they are not interested in the group or what is happening. It can be a variety of reasons. I keep up with the group and post when I want to. That's if I'm active on GR and keeping up with groups. Sometimes, I'm not on GR at all except to record my books and chat a little with friends.
Voting/Nominations:
- I take it for granted that people are going to nominate books that fit the group.
- That people will vote for the book they are going to read.
- I do not think you have to "like" a book to vote for it. I've voted for books that do not perk my interest and read them because there's a chance that I will enjoy it. Slim chance but I don't mind trying out books outside of my interests.
Buddy Reads are great because it's an option to read & chat with people who want to read a book/series.
I haven't been as active within the voting or nominations because a lot of the categories are narrow focused & do not necessarily lead to good nominations. Most of the books that have been up for discussion are not books that I would normally try out. However, I like exploring new ideas, authors and books. Even if I don't want to read 90% of the books that are nominated and chosen, I do look up the books and see if it may catch my interest or try it out because I can borrow it from the library or on KU.
In the past couple of years, I've read BotM books and decided not to post because I didn't feel like I would add anything to the thread. I enjoy seeing what people think about the stories we read. It's even better when we actively talk about it. I'm a fan of the sharing thoughts & discussion. It's not as fun when it's a lot of posting of thoughts and hardly any interaction between posters.
This group has solid guidelines. I don't think we need rules that limit books & reading.
If you don't like a type of book, don't read it. There's a lot of variety in this group. Plenty of options to interact, lurk, read and do something that you enjoy.
Some of my favorite Buddy Reads have been done in this group because we have a great mix of readers with a variety of tastes.
Mod
SciFi and Fantasy Book Club
Books mentioned in this topic
The Calculating Stars (other topics)The Just City (other topics)
Orlando (other topics)
Tomoe Gozen (other topics)
The Silver Metal Lover (other topics)
More...
Every time a YA title comes up, there's a lot of anxiety for the mods because the votes and enjoyment of the book in discussion seem negatively correlated.
So, instead of panicking about it constantly, we're just gonna ask you!
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FA...
This poll is anonymous, uses Google, and does not require a sign in. We're trusting that folks will only vote once so that we can actually get a feel for the group's actual preferences, no matter how you participate!
Likewise, the results are hidden so we won't have commentary while we're receiving responses that might deter anyone. We make no promises that group policy will change any time soon, regardless of the results, but obviously, we want you to be happy here! So, be honest, and thank you in advance for helping keep our group wonderful!
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FA...