And…The Top 100 Poll is Open for Voting!
Over the summer the AAR staff has shared with you our top ten romances. These posts were fun for us, and now it’s your turn to join in the fun and tell us what your favorite romances of all time are. And we’re not asking you to list just your top 10 you can list up to 100 romances. Yes, today is the opening of the 2013 AAR Top 100 Poll with voting closing on Sunday, October 20 at midnight, United States Eastern Standard Time.
This is the sixth AAR Top 100 poll, with previous polls held in 1998, 2000, 2004, 2007, and 2010. The original poll in 1998 was prompted by the release of one of the many 100 Best Books of the Century List (see for example the Modern Library’s Top 100 and Radcliffe Rival 100 Best Novels ). The AAR poll quickly became a valuable resource for romance readers. Many new romance readers use the lists as a place to begin reading the “best of romance.”
As in the past this is a weighted list. You can list up to 100 of your favorite romances, but they need to be numbered, with your favorite book listed as #1, your second as #2, and so on. Because so many books have the same or similar titles, it’s also essential that you list the author’s name next to the title. So if you want to vote for the top three vote getters from the 2010 poll, your ballot would look like the following:
1. Lord of Scoundrels, Loretta Chase
2. Dreaming of You, Lisa Kleypas
3. Devil in Winter, Lisa Kleypas
For those of us who get overwhelmed by too much information, you don’t have to list 100 titles for your ballot to be valid. One of us had a first top 100 ballot with 36 titles on it but, in the 2010 poll she managed to get to 63 titles before feeling overwhelmed.
If you’ve voted in past Top 100 polls you know the drill. Click here to go to the ballot page, read the instructions, and start listing your choices. Haven’t voted before and don’t have a clue what to do? If you don’t keep a record of your reading (and many of us don’t), a good place to start is to check out the results of previous Top 100 polls, as well as some of the recent AAR Annual Reader Polls. A power search at AAR of books assigned specific grades (A, A-, B+, etc.) is also another resource for remembering some of your favorites.
While this is a busy time for us, it’s also an exciting time. The three of us love to read and enter your ballots, even though at times the numbers are rather daunting. For example, in 2010 readers voted for 4,639 titles by 1,296 different authors. And 2,605 of those books appeared on only one ballot. We expect to see even more titles receive votes this year and even more authors represented.
We look forward to receiving your ballot. We know that it can be time-consuming selecting, numbering, and recording your favorites, but we appreciate your help in keeping this wonderful resource at AAR alive!
Thank you and happy voting!
– LinnieGayl Kimmel, Lee Brewer, and Cindy Smith
Yay! Hate the voting – love the results!
My list is 60 books so far but putting them in any ranked order is driving me bonkers. I keep changing my mind.
Thanks to all of you who are participating for the first time! So far things are going quite smoothly, although I for one have a bit of a backlog of ballots to enter.
It’s thrilling. What would change this year? What new books would appear, more paranormals? Erotica? And how many golden oldies would appear?
Just two questions, if you don’t mind. I know they might sound silly, but I’ve never voted.
Could you please tell me if we foreigners from overseas are allowed to vote?
If so, may I include a couple -just two- of Spanish romance novels not translated to English.
I know they will not be on the AAR Top 100 but it would certainly in my own Top 100 (around 60-70, I think).
Oh, and another thing, if I can vote, what name I have to put in the ballot, is it my real and a little bit long name (Christian name, two surnames and so) or a short nickname is enough?
Of course you are eligible to vote — and welcome. Which books you list in your top 100 are completely up to you. Each Top 100 I include some books that I know no one else will include in their ballot, but they’re my Top 100, so they MUST be there :)
The key is including your actual email address. Once in awhile we have a question about a ballot and need to go back to you. If you give us a bad email address and it bounces back to us as undeliverable or we get no response from you, we never enter the ballot. Feel free to shorten your name.
Thank you very much for your answer!
I think I’ve already have my Top 100, and now I have to consider very carefully how to put them.
It’s very exciting.
I found it difficult to number my favorite books. It would have been easier if you just give one point to each book in a ballot. I must admit some are just in the alphabetical order because I couldn’t decide between them.
I had a hard time leaving books that are not strictly romance out of my list. I ended up including a few non-romances that I think are romances. I love this list.
:) I always include a few “”non-romances”” on my list. There are some that I just think have to be there (Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters!).
This will be my first year voting. I don’t think that I will have a problem listing 100 books. The dilemma will be what order to rank my favorites.
I submitted my ballot today for that very reason. I have rearranged the titles on it a gazillion times. Not big changes, but it really just comes down to the mood I am in on any given day.
I kept the Word table I made last time so this go around was much easier.
I have an Excel file with my votes for each of the polls. It’s an easy way for me to look at what I thought was the best in the past and then see where new books I love fit in. Must get to working on my ballot again.
When you first announced the new poll would happen this year, I went through my 2010 list and coded which books I was willing to replace (surprisingly it was not all just titles toward the bottom). I then went through my 2010-2012 Annual Poll picks.
It also helps that I have been rating my digital books in Calibre more diligently the past couple of years. Since I mostly read digital now that made things easier, too. Reviewing the books I’ve read for the reading challenges here at AAR was also very helpful.
I can’t imagine rating a 100 books, so my hat is off to the people who can. It will be interesting to see the results.
In 2010 I was new to romance reading and the Top 100 list was like a god send. I finally had something to guide me instead of wandering around the public library, picking up a book and hoping it wasn’t awful. AAR’s Top 100 took me in so many new directions, introducing me to authors and genres. And now I get to vote- how exciting!
That’s great to hear, LeeF.