The 2007 (Insert Title Here) Award for Literature

[C.]

1) What should our award be called?

2) What, if any, criteria should we follow?

3) What should the procedure be for generating a)the short-list and b)the final recipient?

[Rob]

I'd consider calling it the "Unpretentious" award, since I'd be inclined towards underhyped books. :)

I'd say must be from 2006, and probably worth putting in a few categories--fiction, non fiction, poetry, new writer (must not have a prior book), and maybe one other category to get a nice, even 5.

Perhaps we could each submit one title per category (long list), then do a 1-2-3 vote to narrow it down to 10 for the shortlist, then a final vote?

-Rob

[Conrad]

Rob, with all due respect, I think it'd be better to start with 2007, since otherwise you're just planning your own award's obsolescence. Additionally, I'm not sure what you mean by "underhyped," or how one might quantify that, though if you mean simply that anything that's already won an award should be excluded, that might be reasonable.

Also, the first thing that we should clarify is exactly who should be involved in selecting the award. The entire readership of Goodreads? Just people who decide to participate in this thread? Is it really the place of the readers and contributors to this thread to represent the collective opinion of Goodreads participants?

[Rob]

I understand the idea of being fresh, but the problem of making an award for the year be about books from the same year is that it tends to exclude anything that comes after.

I was being more flippant than anything else in relation to the idea of calling it a unpretentious award. :)

As far as who makes the call, I would think it neigh on impossible to have the entire readership participate, unless Otis wants to make this an official Goodreads Awards style thing. Otherwise, I would think amongst the group membership would be fine, and the award would be the "Goodreads Literary Awards Group ____ No-Prize for Literature" (No prize was an old Stan Lee joke "given" to people who pointed out his mistakes, I think it's appropriate since no one expects there to be an actual award given to the winners.)

-Rob

[C.]

'Nuff said, true believers! I like the idea stealing Stan the Man's title and calling it the "No Prize". The 2007 Noprize For Literature.

I like the idea of nominating books in different categories, as long as we keep them broad like Fiction, non-fiction, etc. How about the fifth category be a "Life Time Achievement" award?

I also thing it should just be for members of this thread -- its not like this award is REALLY going to end up being a cultural force, so we don't have to try too hard to be all inclusive. Also, not only would it be very difficult to make this a site-wite discussion (a logistic nightmare!) but I really don't want to be giving out the GoodReads Award fro Literature. I have some pride.

Trebo's suggestion for voting works for me. Now we just need more than the three of us on this thread -- I don't want to hand out the GoodReady, but I don't want to award the ChriConTre's either. Though on second thought . ..

[Annette]

Re: Trebor - The fifth category could be drama.

[Jango]

Fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama, and new writer all sound like good categories to me. Don't know how easy it's going to be to choose poetry from this year, but I'll leave that to the poets of the group. Bukowski's about as modern as I get.

As for opening it up to the whole Goodreads community, I'm a little nervous we'll end up giving best fiction to J.K. Rawling. But from the authors you guys named in the Nobel Prize thread, I think we're in good hands if it stays within this group.

[Lisa]

You could form a private group for this.

[Rob]

I'll be honest, I'd be clueless at drama, but that does seems like a good fit, as did Lifetime Achievement. Either one would work for me. I don't think the group would need to be private...if someone joins in after the awards, they'd just get to vote next year.

-Rob

[Conrad]

My friend Guy should be able to adjudicate drama... Guy? Where are you?

[C.]

So far there's five of us on this thread, which might be a bit small for the purpose of choosing the best books of 2007.

How do we drum up more particiation?