Nov
12
The All About Romance Reader’s Top 100 Poll is out now. Maybe I can convince my blogging partners to do a table comparison as we did in the past.
AAR also has an analysis of the poll available.
Jane is a long time romance reader whose passion is, you guessed it, reading. She's currently loving contemporary authors like Sarah Mayberry and Kristan Higgins but her first love will always be the historical. Some of her old time favorites are Amanda Quick and Johanna Lindsey and some of the new favorites are Sherry Thomas, Joanna Bourne and Claudia Dain.
Email this author | All posts by Jane
Loading ...
Open Threads at Dear Author. Want to know what new releases are out this month and what readers are excited about reading? Check out the threads below. 
We don’t like to censor comments nor do we endorse the comments of any poster. We do reserve the right to moderate comments but most of the time will not, believing, as Justice Brandeis did, that the greater good is in “more speech, not enforced silence.”
I can’t believe some of the books that are on that list. A few of them where not that good, imo.
Surprise, surprise - there are NO American-set historicals/westerns on that list (except for one LaVryle Spencer title). No Pamela Morsi? No Susan Wiggs? No Maureen McKade (her recent work has been fantastic)?
And hello? No Deborah Smith? No Laura Lee Guhrke (esp. her early work)?
I just can’t believe I’m that weird when it comes to my reading tastes. I’m just going to have to do my own list - that’s all there is to it.
SEP, Crusie, Kleypas, Howard pre-OPEN SEASON, Kinsale, historical Garwood, Chase, Gabaldon, and historical Brockway…I wholeheartedly agree.
Everything else on the list were “meh,” DNFs, or I’ve never heard of because I’ve been living under a rock.
Anyway, I’m a little glad to see only 4 paranormals on the list. Maybe this will encourage authors to move away from that trend and I can go back to my normal book-buying levels.
I have a theory that these polls tend to favor recent releases, about which readers have strong present sensation memories and sentimental favorites that they either periodically re-read or that they remember fondly at the time they make their poll selections. I haven’t gone carefully through the whole list (although I don’t think one of my top ten books was represented in the poll), but I’d love to know how people constructed their lists. For example, I put some books in my top ten or twenty I was hoping to help push up or appear on the list somewhere based on the interim results. So my list definitely reflected the interim results. Also as my list went on, I was less concerned about precise placement of books because I knew that my votes most mattered in those top numbers.
I can’t complain about the list since I didn’t vote this time around, but if they had so many more participants than last time, perhaps my ballot wouldn’t have made much of a difference. Like Wendy, I’m disappointed no American historicals made it to the list. I’d have placed McKade’s “Reason to Live” and Clare’s “Ride the Fire” high on my list. I couldn’t finish Quinn’s “On the Way to the Wedding” even though I’m an unabashed Bridgerton fan. I’m glad “Slave to Sensation” made it to the list, but I’d have rated it much, much higher.
Robin, I expect you’re right that polls like this favor recent releases. I wonder if 10 years from now ebook availability of older titles might even out the results more.
Oh yes, let’s do that! I think it would help our readers get to know our tastes better.
Robin: I suspect your theory is pretty close to the mark! Having taken another look at what I sent in, quite a few of the books that made up my list are books that were released after 2000.
I’ve read the entire top twenty but only three of my top ten matched up with the final top ten and nine books from my list made the top twenty.
Quite a few of my all time favourites didn’t even make the list and the book I rated at no 1 came in at 42!
I would be really interested to know how other people’s top rated books matched up with the results.
Please, please, please do so. It was fun reading your comparison table.
Wholeheartedly agree. Lots of “meh” and DNFs especially on the more current releases that made it there while Carla Kelly & Jo Beverley’s books did not even make it.
I’d love to see a comparison table. I remember seeing the last one and thinking, this reviewer’s taste is more similar to mine, and this one is totally opposite. But of course, I’ve forgotten which reviewer was which! (And plus, there are more of you now.)
Things that strike me:
1) 8 out of top ten are historicals, though we can go back and forth a little on P&P since it was a contemporary when written
2) The Raven Prince at #23. Would that be the highest debut novel ranking on the list, besides Outlanders? (I’m not familiar with Julie Garwood’s chronology of works)
3) No Judith Ivory novel until 49th place!!! And my beloved BEAST nowhere to be seen. Guess I’ve no one to blame but myself for not voting.
4) Is it me or are there fewer writers represented on this year’s list? At a glance it feels like about 10 or 12 authors had probably 75% of the titles.
And no Lorraine Heath westerns. Not one. How wrong is that?
I hadn’t noticed the lack of Jo Beverley and Carla Kelly books until now - that really is a bit of a travesty!
Wendy, I’ve never read any of Lorraine Heath’s westerns but I have tried a couple of her recent historicals… Any recommendations?
Josie:
Definitely her Texas trilogy - Texas Destiny, Texas Glory and Texas Splendor. They’re harder to find but readers also rave about Always To Remember and Sweet Lullaby.
Thanks for the tip Wendy, I’m going to have a hunt for the Texas Trilogy. It sounds very good!
I’m working on mine; doubt it’ll be 100 books on it.
Hello :) speaking of the Texas Trilogy, I actually put Texas Destiny as my number one, I can reread this 1000 times more and still never get sick of it, definitely one to pick up
Oh, I def. rave over Always to Remember - excellent book that I read x years ago. Should be on the list, too, but it’s OOP.