Announcing….the 2010 Top 100 Romances Poll Results!
The weekend may be over, but today is a special Monday. After many hours of reviewing ballots, tabulating results, and coding, drumroll please…
The Top 100 Poll results are up! Since our pollsters receive hundreds of ballots and have to rank many, many books, this is a huge undertaking and I’ve been excited to see what the top books will be. We last did the poll in 2007, and not only are there new romance readers out there, but there have been a lot of new books since then! So, did Lord of Scoundrels stay in the top spot or did you readers vote something else into #1? And which post-2007 release not only made the list, but made it into the top 10? Go check it out!
Many thanks to our polling team – LinnieGayl Kimmel, Lee Brewer, and Cindy Smith – for their hours of work reviewing ballots, tabulating results and putting together the results page. You’ve done a wonderful job!
– Lynn Spencer
Tee: There is no such thing as a perfect voting system. All of them have flaws and can produce perverse results. In fact, I think that most readers would WANT their number 1 choice to be more highly weighted than their no. 100 or even no. 20 selection. I know I certainly would.
If readers were required to identify100 novels without weighting, the resulting list would almost certainly be blander and more generic than the current one, since there would be less room to express idiosyncratic judgments. Yes, you would see books that are generally popular, but these would not necessarily be the ones that readers care most about.
Yes and no. If there were 500 respondents and they all listed the same book on each of their lists, that would certainly give credence to the fact that this book has something not to be missed. Many of us basically said that the first 20 books were probably the most important in being weighed; and the last 40 were probably the least important. But we also said that maybe the first 10 popped into our heads quite easily and the rest sort of fell into place as we recalled them, not necessarily being too concerned about placements at that point.
But you’re correct in that there is no fullproof voting system. One of the basic things would be to have everyone vote, first of all. And I’m sure that didn’t happen. So there were selections out there of people that remained unstated and unpublished in the results.
Regardless, these are the results. Do I agree with them? No, but then I didn’t expect to. We’ve discussed so many good books over the last three to four years on the boards that were not even mentioned in the list. I was just trying to think of ways to get a list out there that had a bit more variety in authors. But you may have the right of it in saying that method of voting doesn’t exist.
As I mentioned in my post on the thread of one of the message boards, this was a daunting task and had to drive the polling talliers nuts at times.
Has any consideration ever been given to asking us to just list our top 100, in no particular order, and that only one vote be given to each nominated book? That way, #1 would be the book written down the most on people’s lists, and on down. It would certainly decrease the time given to weighted placements.
I think that could give an indication, too, of the books that are most popular. Maybe more diverisity would show up. I too found this list to be rather dull. Some authors were mentioned very frequently, while other good authors went MIA (missing in action). If those frequently-mentioned authors are not to one’s taste, then many books on the list were automatically discounted in some minds.
I like Kleypas, but she isn’t the end-all in authors. Ditto with some of the others. As a matter of fact, no author is really supreme over others; but having more of a selection to choose from when showing such a list would be very helpful to new romance-fiction readers.
Just suggestions. I don’t have the answers either. LOL
Thanks for all that hard work!
I was disappointed that there were so few JD Robb/Nora Roberts books on the list, but I guess she is suffering from the fact that she has written over 150 books – the chance that the same book is named often enough gets smaller every year…
I also didn’t expect a small group of authors virtually ‘taking’ over the list with most of their titles – not that I mind seeing someone like Lisa Kleypas mentioned that often – just didn’t expect that.
And personally I’m especially ‘missing’ Jo Beverley on this list.
I’ve been looking forward to seeing the list! LOS and Devil in Winter are two of my favorites and I’m not too surprised by any in the top 20. I’m thrilled to see Not Quite a Husband come in at #18 – it’s one of my all time favorites.
I’m a little surprised that there’s only one Suzanne Brockmann book on the list. Although, Over the Edge is my favorite of her books, I thought that Gone Too Far would certainly be there.
I’m really happy that Kresley Cole’s A Hunger Like No Other made the list as well.
I am amazed that you have the results already! I certainly have some titles to add to my Christmas list. Thanks for all the wonderful work you do at AAR.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to the whole AAR team for compiling the Top 100. [and for providing the easily printable list] I always eagerly await the results and am pleased to see how many of these outstanding books I’ve already read and all of the new ones I have yet to enjoy. AAR is my “”go-to”” resource and I check-in daily. Your passion and efforts are greatly appreciated. Now I’m off to get a few of those TBR treasures!
While some of these romances are also on my all time list (I didn’t vote this time) I think it might be time to retire some of them. Just to see what appears.
Is it possible to set up an All Time Hall of Fame? So if a title appears in, say, the top ten for five years running, then it earns a place there?
I’ve read Lord of Scoundrels many times, and Flowers From The Storm is always going to feature in my top ten, but I’d love to see more titles there.