August 2010 BotMs

[Kathleen]

Books of the Month for August 2010 are:


Mine Till Midnight (Hathaways, Book 1) by Lisa Kleypas

(Selected by Sam, Kristie, Ruby, Gina, Wendy, Kathleen)


Secrets by Jude Deveraux

(Selected by Karen, Wendy, Lisa, Julia, Kristie, and Ruby)

[Kathleen]

Books in the Hathaways series are as follows:


Mine Till Midnight (Book 1)

Seduce Me at Sunrise (Book 2)

Tempt Me at Twilight (Book 3)

Married By Morning (Book 4)

[Julia]

I'm not crazy about these new rules. Can I only vote for the books I'm interested in reading? I haven't thought so, so I've voted for books I'm pretty sure I'm not going to read, including this month.

[Kathleen]

I don't understand. Why would you vote for a book that you would force others to read, but you don't intend to read yourself? The purpose of our polls is to select books to read and discuss. Gina and I both try to read the books that are nominated to start the discussions rolling. By voting for a book that you don't intend to read you are forcing us to read a book by an author that we personally may consider average or a genre that we don't enjoy.

If you don't intend to read the book or don't like posting your opinions online, please don't select a book for the rest of us to read.

[Gina]

Julia, I'm not sure I understand either. Why wouldn't you vote for the books that interest you? That's what I do - I vote for the books I think look good and I'm interested in reading. Sometimes, it even happens that the books that look interesting may not even be the ones I nominated - you have no idea how many times that's happened, LOL! Why wouldn't you vote for the ones you'd like to read?

[Julia]

Kathleen and Gina,

Sorry, I didn't see your notes until a month later... So, I'm truly interested in reading book a) and I vote for it, but there's also a book b) and a writer to vote on. And I feel I must vote on those as well, even though I'm not interested in reading them.
So I've stopped voting altogether, so as not to skew votes.

[Kathleen]

Julia,

We have different purposes for voting on books than voting for an author.

For books, we are selecting a book to read and discuss. We only want people who intend to read the book for which they have voted to participate in polling.

For author, we are selecting an author to honor. We are trying to select an author who our members consider exemplary for their genre. As long as you have read the author for whom you have selected, everyone is encouraged to vote.

If only one author is nominated in a given month, we will list their name and "skip AotM this month" as a second choice. Again, we would only expect those who have read the nominated author to vote for or against him or her. Occasionally there is a famous author who gets mixes reviews from readers. By having a "skip this author" category, voters can express their option. The only request that Gina and I have is that our members have read the author that they are voting against in an one-author poll. We consider it kind of tacky to say an author isn't good at their craft if you haven't read anything from that author, never heard of them, or don't read that genre.

If there is an author who you consider exemplary, please consider nominating that person as an author of the month

[Julia]

So I have the option to abstain on voting for an author. Thank you! For instance, I love Ilona Andrews and I am pretty sure I've read everything they've written...

If I want to read a book in column a, but not column b, do I vote for the book in column a and not column b? Will that skew the voting?

[Kathleen]

If you don't like any of the books that been nominated for a given month, don't vote that month on either first or second choice book poll. Please consider nominating a book or books more to your taste for the next month.

If you only like one of the books that have been nominated, vote on the first choice poll, because you really only have a first choice. The total number of votes are always significantly higher on the first choice poll as compared to the second choice poll (many of our members only like one choice). Again, please consider nominating a book or books more to your taste in the next month.

You can choose to vote for or skip AotM whether or not you have voted for a book or books on the book polls. Please vote for people whose body of work you consider exemplary and only vote against in a one-author poll, and even then, only vote against when you have read the single author who has been nominated. As with books, please consider nominating an author more to your taste the following month.