The Sword and Laser discussion

Round 3 complete. The Final Round has begun! Voting closes March 28nd at 11:59PM PST.

Please Note: Voting ends earlier this round due to the recording time of the next podcast:

Tom wrote: "Yes it ends March 28 Pacific time but technically that makes it end at 3 AM March 29 eastern time.

It was my only option to have the poll ended before we did the next Sword and Laser episode."

So don't procrastinate on your vote!

View the Full Bracket: here
Summary of Round 3: here
Summary of Round 2: here
Summary of Round 1: here

Here is the final match-up:

The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman
vs.
Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

vote

What are the odds of an exact tie again this year? :-D

Brilliance if there's a tie, I voted for them both from the beginning!

I voted against The Invisible Library in round 1, but I've voted for it ever since. I voted for Howl's Moving Castle every round though.

I've been voting against Howl every round, but still expect it to win.

I want 1/2 last round, but I'm considering voting for the one I didn't vote for last round. I know, I'm a bit of an odd duck.

Speaking of that, yesterday in the river behind my house there were a mating pair of geese, a mating pair of wood ducks, and one extra female wood duck. I guess that makes her an odd duck as well. ;-)

Well lucky for me, because I got both books from Overdrive way at the start when I checked all the nominees status. What better way to refurbish the old " To Be Read Pile " then with March Madness. Thank you Sword and Laser team for yet another fun shot at Madness!!

Darren wrote: "I've been voting against Howl every round, but still expect it to win."
That's funny...me too! Actually if I were to rank my interest in the entire list of 16, it would probably be dead last. Invisible Library near the top. :)

Another year of March Madness where YA voters swamp others.

Brendan wrote: "Another year of March Madness where YA voters swamp others."

What was the YA novel that won last year?

ADSoM

Personally I didn't pay much attention to which titles were YA and which weren't. I just voted for the books that sounded the most interesting to me.

Yes it ends March 28 Pacific time but technically that makes it end at 3 AM March 29 eastern time.

It was my only option to have the poll ended before we did the next Sword and Laser episode.

Sorry for the confusion!

Rob wrote: "Personally I didn't pay much attention to which titles were YA and which weren't. I just voted for the books that sounded the most interesting to me."

Ditto. The marketing categories don't matter, only the stories.

Last year, I watched my choices get eliminated. This year, they kept progressing, so I keep having to make difficult choices. Maybe next year will be balanced.


Brendan wrote: "Another year of March Madness where YA voters swamp others."

Then the YA-isn't-worth-reading crowd needs to start voting. Again, we have a few hundred voters in a 20,000+ membership.

Aaron wrote: " Again, we have a few hundred voters in a 20,000+ membership. "

Yeah. We don't exactly have great voter participation in these things..

I don't hate on YA. Give me a good Riordan story any time. Preferably now!

Rob wrote: "Yeah. We don't exactly have great voter participation in these things..."

Eh, I figure there's a lot of inactive users. I have very few real-life friends who use Goodreads a lot (one of mine has apparently been reading the same book for 2.5 years).

For our membership page, I went back to page 343 to find someone who hadn't logged in this month (so just over 10,000 members logged in this month for whatever reason).

For members who made just 1 comment (however long ago that was), I needed go only go back to page 223, so barely 6,700 members have even commented.

For those who have at least 2 comments, there's only about 4,400 (page 147) (with no comment on when those comments were).

We have far more lurkers than anything (as is the case with most online forums). And there are many reasons not to vote.

Say you don't have notifications for this group--so you only check it when you log into the site once in a blue moon. Or maybe you don't care who wins! You're open to all of the books (or you've read them all).

And not everyone uses the forum vs. listening to the podcast I'm sure. I always figure the active membership was probably closer to a few thousand at most, not 23K-plus. And that's OK, but I don't think we should delude ourselves that we could have thousands of votes for each poll.

The boys have to lift their game next year. Girls have dominated the first 2 March Madness contests.

Girl power :-)

We are definitely in a "too close to call" situation with this poll. Almost all the other polls I could tell the favorite within the first 100 votes. This one I can't.

David wrote: "Rob wrote: "Yeah. We don't exactly have great voter participation in these things..."

Eh, I figure there's a lot of inactive users. I have very few real-life friends who use Goodreads a lot (one o..."

Oh, I wasn't suggesting that we should be getting thousands of votes. But the group has over 500 patrons. Which means they care enough about the group to pay for something they could get for free.

And I highly doubt everyone whose been voting is a patron (though I'm sure many are).

But hey, to each their own. Lack of participation only makes my vote more valuable.

Data point: I think I voted in the first round. Since then I've recognized that I'd really rather other people pick, since I'm not reading much new stuff anyway these days. (A little, mostly by favorite authors. Sometimes life gets like that.) I'm a patron.

Conversely, this non-patron has been voting every round. I'm a sucker for polls!

I've got a terrible track record for predicting the result of public polls though. I have a definite favourite for this final round, but am trying to be prepared to have my hopes dashed!

I don't care what a book is categorized. I have YA series and even Middle Grade ones I really love. A good story is a good story!

Is Howl's Moving Castle middle grade fiction? Or am I just falsely assuming that because the movie was a cartoon? I'm afraid I know what happens when one assumes...

Patron and lurker (mostly) here. Hmmm... Patron Lurker sounds like a good name for an eccentric and mysterious character in a fantasy novel.

I forgot to vote in Round 1 before the deadline, but I've voted in every round since. I'd be happy with either book so the choice was difficult. In the end, one book had something the other didn't...a glowing review from Gail Carriger (love her books). :)

But seriously, I'm excited to see what wins, although I'll probably buy them both anyway.

Colin wrote: "Conversely, this non-patron has been voting every round. I'm a sucker for polls!

I'm the same as Colin. I'm not a patron, but I have a weird love of polls and surveys, so I've voted in every round. xD

I'll honestly be pleased with whichever book wins. I read The Invisible Library with Vaginal Fantasy and liked it, so if it wins, I'll read the second book. And if Howl wins, well, I've always been meaning to read it! So it's a win-win for me. :D

Kelli wrote: "Patron and lurker (mostly) here. Hmmm... Patron Lurker sounds like a good name for an eccentric and mysterious character in a fantasy novel.

I forgot to vote in Round 1 before the deadline, but I..."

Ah but the other has a glowing review from Lois Bujold. =)

Not that it's really significant but I noticed for both books that almost all the reviews, on the first page at least, are by women; 26 to 4.

We need a name for this recurring phobia, fear of reading YA books.

Pedobibliophobia, maybe, or ephebobibliophobia?

Just adding pedo- (children) or ephebo- (adolescent) in front of bibliophobia.

Also because something has been turned into a cartoon certainly doesn't make it middle grade or YA. There is a ton of anime that is 18+

It never crossed my mind to call Howl's Moving Castle YA. I think a young teenager could really enjoy it, in fact I know several who did, but that's also true of Rendezvous With Rama and Lord of the Rings.

I think sometimes we get a little hung up on labels.

I realize something being made into a cartoon doesn't make it necessarily middle grade, which is why I said it was an assumption I had made that perhaps made me an ass. But on the Goodreads page for Howl, people have classified it as middle grade. For those of you who have read it, would you say that's accurate?

I'm trying not to get any new books this year and work on my TBR pile. (currently something like 300+ unread physical books). So I only voted for books I already had.

I adore Howl's and highly recommend it for adults but it's definitely middle grade.

Lord of the Flies is YA. It's not worth reading?

YA or middle grade is fine. I mean, sometimes adult books can annoy the hell out of me too.

Anyway, I just read both samples and I found Howl's more interesting and the writing's more enjoyable so I will vote that. Some extra less bucks at Kindle compared to the other one also helps.

kafanyu wrote: "I might be OCD, but has anyone else noticed that the title of this thread says that voting ends March 28nd?"

Yes, Tom explains in message 13 of this thread that he had to end it then for it to be done in time for the next podcast.

Should be 28th, though.

Dang, I thought it ended on March 32th.

Copy paste ftl

Rob wrote: "Copy paste ftl"

Yeah, I figured, which is why I managed not to mention it for several days. :-)

It's absolutely bizarre that anyone would dismiss DWJ as a YA author. Like, first of all, on the podcast there's been a very long discussion, spanning the past few years, of why dismissing x because of label y is very silly, but, second of all, DWJ is one of the greatest writers in Fantasy. Period. She is a Major Figure. It's like dismissing CS Lewis Tolkien as YA writers.

And yeah, if anyone thinks a Miyazaki movie is just for children... please go buy some Miyazaki movies. Please. Your life will be better with them in it.

I think you have to take it on a case by case basis and not the general label. There is obviously a lot of good YA, but I would guess that at least 50% of the stuff shelved under YA in B&N is not worth reading.

That's exactly why I don't pay too much attention to the labels. I often just rely on the blurb and some of the reviews/ratings of people on GoodReads whose opinions I find often match my own when trying to decide to read a book or not.

Oh the suspense!

I just asked if Howl was middle grade, I never said "I refuse to read middle grade." It's not my preferred read, but hey, the first couple of Harry Potter books were middle grade and I certainly enjoyed the heck out of them!

Also, I have indeed watched Miyazaki movies, as well as other animated things meant strictly for adults. Some people love them, but personally that medium just does not do much for me; I don't enjoy them as much as I would a non-animated version.

I ended up voting for Howl specifically because it does not 'seem' like my usual cup of tea, and variety is the spice of life, eh? But all I asked was "Is the book considered middle grade," to which a simple yes or no would have sufficed (so thank you to the person who answered the question!)

I think some people are reading more into these posts than was intended, which can be easy to do through text alone. (Although looking back, I took away the same interpretation of the first YA comment, which is maybe why some people were overly sensitive to my MG question).

Thought you guys and gals would be as amused as I was that I went to Overdrive to see if The Invisible Library was available for check out (I've already read Howl's Moving Castle) and Overdrive didn't seem to have it at all. Huh, The Invisible Library is invisible to Overdrive.

Note, I've since found it but had to go a roundabout way to get to it. Sadly, it's not available through my library (yet).

My library's Overdrive account has Invisible Library. :-)

Jessica wrote: "I think some people are reading more into these posts than was intended, which can be easy to do through text alone. (Although looking back, I took away the same interpretation of the first YA comment, which is maybe why some people were overly sensitive to my MG question)"

Don't take it personally. Some discussions never really end. You could have said "Kickass! This book is totally YA!" and depending on the weather, have seen the same sequence of follow-up posts.

Jessica wrote: "I think some people are reading more into these posts than was intended, which can be easy to do through text alone."

Yes, although it was amusing to read the dozen or so indignant replies to an argument nobody made.