Ballot blanks

[jmc_bks]

I just submitted my ballot for AAR's annual poll.  When the results are announced, I'll post a comparison.  As I filled in the ballot, there were a few things that stood out to me.

• I had no Favorite Funny.  I suppose Lean Mean Thirteen was sort of funny, but the book was pretty ~meh~.  And I don't think of it as a romance.  Otherwise, nothing on my 2007 reading list was what I would call humorous romance.
  
• Erotic Romance?  Another blank, because the 2007 releases I read were not memorable and the best that I read were published earlier.
• The strongest heroines I read last year weren't romance heroines -- they were  Mercy Thompson in Blood Bound and Nadia from Exit Strategy.   Mystery/suspense and urban fantasy.  So the name I filled in was a close runner up...in almost any other year, she'd've been my selection outright, but Nadia and Mercy blew me away.
  
• I had no romance glom this year.  Since I read all of Brian K. Vaughan's Y: the last man, you could call that a glom, but I don't think graphic novels count for AAR.  And I read two books and a novella by Meljean Brook, but that wasn't a glom because it wasn't the collection of a backlist.
  
• No debut author.  Although I read a few debuts, I wasn't all that taken by them.  I liked Meljean Brook for this category, but she posted that she didn't count as she'd published a novella prior to 2007.
  
• The short story category is one that I had a hard time with.  I still have one more novella to read, and there were three on my short list for voting.  Except the very best novella I read last year?   Ember by Bettie Sharpe, but I don't think it qualifies since it was a free e-book published on a blogger's website rather than a "legitimate" publisher.
  
• Generally speaking, there were several books that were not romance genre books but were widely read by romance readers that I wanted to shoe horn into one or more categories on my ballot.  But it didn't work.  Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews.  Blood Bound by Patricia Briggs.  Legacy by Lois McMaster Bujold.  Exit Strategy by Kelley Armstrong.

Comments

[sarahf.livejournal.com]

Joey Hill's Vampire Queen's Servant didn't do it for you?

[jmc-bks.livejournal.com]

I read the first few pages of VQS but couldn't get into it, so I added it to the TBR pile for another attempt later. Hill's Natural Law was, hands down, the best erotic romance I read all year, but it didn't qualify.

[sarahf.livejournal.com]

Did you try her Rough Canvas? IMO, better than NL, and I don't say that lightly because I adore that book!

[jmc-bks.livejournal.com]

No -- is it a stand alone or part of the NL series? I'll check it out when I get home tonight.

[sarahf.livejournal.com]

Part of the NL series. Marcus and Thomas from, I think, Holding the Cards. Fucking brilliant, 'scuse the language. Just amazing.

[jmc-bks.livejournal.com]

I'm going to have to reread Holding the Cards now...because I don't remember Marcus and Thomas at all. I'm probably setting off filters and alerts everywhere, but I just read the excerpt for RC at Hill's website. And I really want to read the rest of the book now.

[sarahf.livejournal.com]

Marcus was the third person in their little "save whatsisname" session in HtC. The gay male top.

RC is one of the most beautiful love stories I've ever read. It's a hard core novel, don't get me wrong, but what makes it work so perfectly is how she builds the characters, breaks them down, and then rebuilds them together. The weaknesses of NL (the silly murder subplot) are perfected in RC (by not having a subplot, mainly). And as much as I like kinky sex, it's kinky for a reason and a purpose, and it's stunning. Hill leaves me profoundly satisfied as a reader and very depressed as a writer--there's no way I could be as good as her (if I ever tried--I feel like Lady Catherine de Bourgh).

[dogzzz2002.livejournal.com]

I'm having the same problems. I guess the MJD I read could be the best funny but I don't know if it's the best, best. I struggle with it because I didn't really read too many books this year. I may just fill in the six categories and let it go. I'm not sure I even read a historical that blew me away last year.

CindyS