New Leaf 2020-2021 Theme Suggestions

[CRussel]

As some of you have no doubt noticed, we're about to run out of themes for the New Leaf Book Club. So it's time to start picking themes for next year. I'm going to preempt the next two months, however.

December's theme will be The Most Wonderful Time of the Year: Walking in a Winter Wonderland (or, if you're in the Southern Hemisphere: In the Heat of the Summer).

January's theme will be Second Chance: Books nominated but not selected between the December, 2019 nomination thread, and the November, 2020 nomination thread.

ETA: There will be no further themes required. As we've talked about next year, it became clear that there's just not enough time and interest for this to continue, and I'm personally no longer able to run the club. Therefore we'll be wrapping things up shortly.

[CRussel]

Books eligible for nomination in December, for discussing in January, 2021 must have been fully nominated for the discussions of calendar year 2020.

Ground rules:

• Each person can nominate ONE book from all the books nominated for the 2020 year, and no seconds are required.
  
• You don't need to have been the original nominator of the book, or even have voted for it. You simply want to encourage us to reconsider it for the book we discuss in January.

Voting will be the same as every other month. Multiple choice, votes are visible, and only those who regularly participate (or who contact me via PM or in the Welcome thread) are eligible to vote. All who vote are expected to participate in the discussion regardless of which book is ultimately selected.

[CRussel]

For December's book, I'm going with The Most Wonderful Time of the Year. This is intended as a "holiday" theme, but like all our themes, your interpretation of that can be as flexible as you wish. Subtheme's are Walking in a Winter Wonderland or In the Heat of the Summer, which pretty much tells you just how flexible we get.

[CRussel]

Suggested themes so far include:

We Were Here First: Stories by Indigenous and Native Peoples

5-Buck Chuck: EBooks whose price is $4.99 USD or less (the reference is to a particularly vile California wine whose name was "2 Buck Chuck", but I thought $1.99 was a bit too limiting.) The only limitation for this theme is that the price (as posted on Amazon.com/Kindle-eBooks) be $4.99 or less.

Free for All: Books in the Public Domain. (And yes, I think there is likely to be a good deal of overlap with the 5-buck Chuck theme, so one or the other, please. And I'd note that in the last year, nearly 1/2 of our selected books have been PD books, so my sense is that we're already covering this.)

[JSWolf]

Free for All is not public domain. It's whatever you want to nominate. If you want to do public domain, then a good title for that would be The Public Option.

As for 5-Buck Chuck, Can we have prices from other stores such as Kobo, eBooks.com or Google? What about stores in CA and UK?

I have a suggestion...No Time Like the Present eBooks no later then the year 2000 and they cannot be written about any time prior to 2000. So for example, no historical fiction. These books can be about the future, just not the past.

[Uncle Robin]

I do like the sound of "We Were Here First". I look forward to seeing what gets nominated if this theme makes the cut

[gmw]

If I might make an observation (not a criticism): it seems some of these themes are tending away from our open-ended, "make it what you will", style to more specific selection criteria. I'm thinking specifically of We Were Here First, and 5-Buck Chuck; as JSWolf points out "Free for All" has many possible interpretations and so is more inline with the previously used themes. I don't have a big problem with changing the style of themes, maybe the old has run its course, although I wonder if it might raise queries/arguments about how well a book fits or does not fit, I just thought it appropriate to highlight the change.

And if we're happy with specific selection criteria, then, JSWolf, I do quite like your suggestion of No Time Like the Present.

I'm not a fan of 5-Buck Chuck, only because I see it as being difficult to manage across our global community. (Although, curiously, my most recent nomination would fit, so maybe it's not that hard.)

[Catlady]

Free for All IS public domain. My idea for a theme is PUBLIC DOMAIN BOOKS. So I'll revise my suggestion to Public Domain Books: Books in the Public Domain. Can I be any clearer than that?

[Catlady]

I don't like 5-Buck Chuck. I do not wish to choose a book by price. I think it's the worst criterion to use to find a worthwhile book to read.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Free for All IS public domain. My idea for a theme is PUBLIC DOMAIN BOOKS. So I'll revise my suggestion to Public Domain Books: Books in the Public Domain. Can I be any clearer than that?

It's not the idea of public domain books. It's the name of the theme. Free for All is always been used for choosing anything you want. That's why I suggested The Public Option as a name for the all public domain theme.

Because if we were to have a theme that was a pick what you want, Free for All would be the name.

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by Catlady

I don't like 5-Buck Chuck. I do not wish to choose a book by price. I think it's the worst criterion to use to find a worthwhile book to read.

And yet, with PD as a theme (Way too restrictive for our open themes), you're doing exactly that.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by CRussel

And yet, with PD as a theme (Way too restrictive for our open themes), you're doing exactly that.

Oh, give me a break. You don't like the theme, fine, but don't pretend it's restrictive to find a book that has been published in all but the last hundred or so years.

[JSWolf]

Another suggestion is Real Life. This would be non-fiction books.

[JSWolf]

delete post

[Catlady]

I'm outta here.