European Royalty discussion

Okay everyone, we're going to shake things up a bit here! If it doesn't work out, we can go back to the old way of nominating and voting, but I think this will work out really well.

Anyone who would like to nominate ONE book may do so in this thread. The only requirement this month is that the book cannot be about the English or take place primarily in England. Also, please try to check amazon or some other site to make sure the book is easily available - the last thing we want is to nominate some great book that no one can get! If you nominate more than ONE book, only the first book listed will make it into the voting thread (so save additional books for the next months!).

Feel free to nominate one book of your choice in this thread until August 2, 9pm Eastern.

At around that time, I'll make a voting thread and list all the nominated books, and people can vote for one book off of that list until August 6 around 9pm Eastern. Discussion can start on August 17.

We will get back to our normal dates for the Sept 15-Oct 15 read, but we will try out this way of nominating for at least a while. If you are interested in other possible changes occurring with the nominations (such as themes), please check out the thread in this topic labeled Changes.

I'm sorry that I've gotten rid of the nominating list for those of you who were on it, but you can now nominate each month if you want without having to wait for your turn, so I believe this system will actually work out better for you. Thank you so much for your willingness to be on the list, and please please please nominate now!

I nominate The Last Queen: A Novel by C.W. Gortner about Juana la Loca, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. This was nominated before but wasn't easily available at the time, but it has been republished and released this month.

(Oh, as books get nominated, I'll add them to the nominated book shelf so people can look at them easily)

I nominate the first book in a trilogy about Josephine Bonaparte - The Many Lives and Secret Sorrows of Josephine B. by Sandra Gulland. The trilogy got nominated here once by someone else and looked really interesting.

Okay, this is Sara posting for her mother (Barb). Barb nominates Crown of Aloes by Norah Lofts about Isabella of Spain. This would have been posted last night, but Barb wasn't sure how to post (she's been a lurker for months and has been reading the books, but she relies on the email digests for info about what the group is doing), and I wasn't able to get to it until this morning.

Welcome to the group Barb (aka mom)! Don't worry, I'll give you a tutorial on how to use this site - until I hacked into your account to post your book, I didn't realize that you weren't actually going to the site. Hope you like the photo I gave you!

I nominate Stealing Athena by Karen Essex.

Laura, since we already voted for this month, I'll make sure your nomination gets listed for next month's vote.

Quick question about nominations - are we still limiting it at 3 or are we limiting it by date that you have to get the nomination in? I was just curious whether we ended up with 3 this time again on purpose or by accident.

My two cents - I would prefer date limit, because if we do "first 3" then whoever happens to be online and get to it quickest could be responsible for all of the nominations - and we might be excluding people who don't get online as often.

Thoughts?

-em

I think that's a good point, Emily.

Anyone who nominates a book by the chosen date will have their book listed on the voting list. It was just a coincidence that there happened to be three books nominated last month (Laura's nomination came in after we had already started voting which is why I told her I would get it in the next month). If there are 10 nominated, I'll add all 10 to the voting thread. I'll post the new nominating thread tomorrow!

OK great! I just wanted to make sure!