I received the following message from AAR (All About Romance) a few days ago. This poll is asking everyone’s all time favorites from the beginning of time to date, and you can list 100—or only 1. You can see the 2010 poll here (tallying the votes must be a b!itch and a half).
——– Original Message ——–
Subject: All About Romance Top 100 Poll
Date: Wed, 9 Oct 2013 02:50:38 -0400
From: xxxxxxxx
To: ellen@oconnellauthor.com
Dear Ms. O’Connell,
I am one of the volunteer pollsters for All About Romance. Right now we are running the Top 100 Romances Poll and would love for you and your readers to stop by and participate in the fun! The poll runs through midnight October 20, 2013 and we would be grateful if you could share the link with your readers.
Contest link: http://www.likesbooks.com/top100ballot2013.html
Thanks for your consideration! And we hope to be tallying your ballot soon!
Cindy
—————————————————-
I can’t even imagine typing out 100 favorites, even if I could think of that many. Looking at the 2010 list, I do see some books that would make my list, like LaVyrle Spencer’s Morning Glory—which if my search feature worked right is the only one labeled “Americana” on the whole list!—but I’m unfamiliar with many and wouldn’t have rated many more as favorites. Books are so subjective.
Anyway, I’m passing this along as requested and hope some of you have fun with it. I am going to vote for at least a few faves, although I think most of mine will sink into single-vote obscurity.
~ Ellen
oconnellauthor blog 
Yes will compile a list but as you probably guessed “eyes of silver eyes of gold” and “dancing on coals” are going to be very easily and automatically in the top 10 if not top 5 of my list. Nope who am I kidding eyes of silver….will be automatically number 1. (I read 200 to 300+ books per year, short and long).
Hope all well now in your world.
Cheers Rosheen and from Australia
Hi Rosheen – Thanks for the thumbs up. I don’t think the AAR message is meant as “get your fans to vote for your books,” and I’m not passing it along with that thought, but it does seem if any one author passes along a message like that, her fans are more likely than the general reader population to mention her books and in fact that genre. It sure would be nice to see more than one “Americana” book on the next list, but my fear is it’s more likely to contain m/m type stuff. If you go by number of reviews, that’s more popular, and I confess to being unable to understand the appeal (to a woman). ~Ellen
I voted! And I came up with a dozen. However, since half of them are “Americana,” I don’t expect to see them on the final list. Even so, what the heck. ~Ellen
I actually sent in a ballot for the first time. Eyes of Silver Eyes of Gold is my number one. I only did 23. Each one is a book I have read multiple times. I also have several Americana so we will see……
Hi Patricia – Thanks a bunch. It great that you feel that way about Eyes.
This was my first ballot too, so the email AAR sent paid off in rounding up a few participants. I’m sure they sent emails like that to many authors in hopes of just that.
You managed to list almost twice as many as I did. I know some readers keep detailed lists of everything they read and how they feel about it, but I never have. In spite of vowing to do better regularly, I never do it. So I just had to sit and think of those romances I’ve reread and those I know I will reread. I went through everything on my Kindle, and if I can’t even remember the story that went with the title….
So I listed my comfort reads and a couple others. In the days of paper, I used to say you could tell the good books because they had wavy pages where I cried, but in these ebook days, that no longer works. 🙂
Typing out a list of 100 books would be a chore, so maybe I don’t regret not having that many, but trying to compile all the lists will be much, much worse. I suppose they use some kind of point system, so if someone lists a particular book as #1 it gets 100 points and if someone lists the same book as #100, it gets 1 point, or some version of that. Being mathematically-challenged, I shudder to think of it.
~ Ellen
The title of a book should remind you of the story……I couldn’t agree more. It is one of my pet peeves actually.
I looked over my keeper shelf then my iPad. I discovered MacKenzie’s Mountain was missing so I went to the used book store and replaced it. Have you read it?
My way of putting it would be that the book should have impressed you enough that you remember the title.
There’s a thread on AAR here:
http://www.likesbooks.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=11453&sid=214ba4f1269dea9958e095a6bda5a5a9
where readers are sharing their lists. It’s interesting. For one of them I doubt if I share a single title and in fact have only read anything by a few of the authors. Another has half of the 12 I listed. And some of them have done 100!
No, I haven’t read Mackenzie’s Mountain. Looked on Amazon, and it does sound good, but since it’s not available for Kindle, I won’t be buying it soon. I’ve pretty much cleared all the paper books out of my house except for 2-1/2 bookcases (the center one has enclosed storage on the bottom half). One has all non-fiction, reference books, etc., and the other one and a half has old favorites such as everything Dick Francis ever wrote (which are mostly hardbacks). Just checked the two libraries I have access to, and they don’t have it, which surprises me a little. The Denver Library has a lot of older books.
~Ellen
Hi Ellen, I’m really curious about your favourites. Is it possible to list them? Perhaps we could find something new to read.:)
Hi mirkamo and welcome. I think I’m going to answer you in another post rather than here in a comment. ~Ellen